Needing help on how to speed up designs, in general
At the entrance to the forums, a note reads "Power Integrations provides numerous types of material and tools to assist in the process of creating power supplies. These include reference designs (with circuit schematics, board layouts, magnetics construction and characterization data), design tools, design software, applications guidelines, and other items to assist customers with design, evaluation and production."
The problem is the "magnetics construction and characterization data".
We are a small company, 20 people, 2.5 engineers, serving the OEM market with custom electrical designs and manufacturing; and we have to crank out new designs sometimes in a week or two. We don't have the time for all this "magnetics construction and characterization". I need to find a reference design using an off-the-shelf transformer, that I can copy and modify as needed in an afternoon. And needless to say we can't afford to design a custom transformer every time a design needs a switching supply.
In the good old days we used to use the reference designs provided by Premier Magnetics, but as those old parts keep becoming obsolete, it becomes more and more difficult. Right now it takes us sometimes two or three days, for a given supply, researching what new parts to use instead of the old parts in those Premier designs. Trying to use your company's reference designs or design tools is completely unhelpful, as the assumption is always that one has the time and budget to design a custom transformer for every application, which is absurd.
So my question is, how do I go about designing a supply in an afternoon, like I used to be able to do?
Right now I have to come up with a 5V, 2A supply, with extra +/-12V. I found the Premier design using their TSD-1110 transformer and a TOP224Y. My instinct is to ignore that and go for TOP226Y, but this part is obsolete. TOP226YN is not obsolete, but it is "not recommended for new designs". So I go to your website to try to find a table of equivalent new parts, but after about 2 hours I can't find any such thing. And looking at your design guides, I found some tables of reference designs, and an "idea file" for a 5V 15W with +/-12, which I could use, but there was no link to the reference design, and when I copied the code and entered it in your search form it found nothing. Is there a way to have things be good again, as in the Premier Magnetics old days?
Comments
Hi Dan,
We hear your frustration. For transformers, we are in the process of bringing on more magnetics partners like Premier Magnetics, who can support off-the-shelf transformer options for our reference designs.
Another option for prototyping is to use our transformer sample service. More information can be found here: https://ac-dc.power.com/design-support/rapid-transformer-samples/
-PI-ODO
Thanks for replying and I hope, for all of our sake's, that this "process of bringing on more magnetics partners" is actually true and proceeding at maximum speed. The transformer sample service is of no help to us. Like I said, I used to be able to design a switching supply in an afternoon, or even in a couple of hours. And your sampling service is for sampling CUSTOM transformers. Is it not? We don't usually have the budget for custom transformers. We don't want custom transformers. There was only one time we needed and wanted a custom transformer; that was for a 1 kV supply.
In the mean time, and until you do have off the shelf magnetics reference designs, the least you could do is provide tables suggesting what new part to use to replace obsolete parts. I looked for such a table at your website and could not find one. Apollogies in advance if I missed it.
On our part, here, I had a talk with our management, and they agreed it is better to stop trying to continue to use Power Integrations solutions, and just go with encapsulated PC-mount switching supplies for most future designs from now on. That's what I had to do 2 weeks ago.
Used the parametric search for reference designs. Found one; downloaded the PDF.... Again, transformer construction instructions... What is needed, desperately, is reference designs using off the shelf transformers. I need to come up with a design like today; --actually, last week--; but all your tools and help files tell me is that I have to design a brand new transformer every time!!! This is just a stupid 5V 2A supply, --with extra +/-9V or +/-12V outputs-- that I need for this design. It is ludicrous I should have to design a custom transformer for it. And I even know what transformer I need; it is the TSD-1110. I just don't know which of your chips to use with it, to replace the old TOP224Y ...