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4hv.org :: Forums :: General Science and Electronics
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How do those single transistor wall warts work?

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Steve Conner
Fri Jan 27 2012, 01:08PM Print
Steve Conner Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
A while back, there was some discussion of very cheap Chinese wall power supplies that contained just one transistor. We wondered how on earth they could possibly work.

In this video, Mike "Electric Stuff" Harrison shows the answer is "They don't" smile
Link2
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Experimentonomen
Fri Jan 27 2012, 01:30PM
Experimentonomen Registered Member #941 Joined: Sun Aug 05 2007, 10:09AM
Location: in a swedish junk pile
Posts: 497
Indeeed, and the one he got was particularly bad, usually even those cheap single transistor ones have a feedback circuit with an opto, atleast the ones i have do.

However the lack of input and output filtering is evident.
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Marko
Fri Jan 27 2012, 03:06PM
Marko Registered Member #89 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
Location: Zadar, Croatia
Posts: 3145
Haha, I'd at least give it a +1 for withstanding a short and not blowing up!

Marko
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Alex M
Fri Jan 27 2012, 05:03PM
Alex M Registered Member #3943 Joined: Sun Jun 12 2011, 05:24PM
Location: The Shire, UK
Posts: 552
Steve Conner wrote ...

A while back, there was some discussion of very cheap Chinese wall power supplies that contained just one transistor. We wondered how on earth they could possibly work.

In this video, Mike "Electric Stuff" Harrison shows the answer is "They don't" smile
Link2


Maybe it uses the same setup as that single transistor 2n3055 flyback transformer circuit, I took a hand-held bug zapper apart once and that was exactly what the circuit inside it was.


1327683747 3943 FT133232 Img 0222
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Forty
Fri Jan 27 2012, 06:36PM
Forty Registered Member #3888 Joined: Sun May 15 2011, 09:50PM
Location: Erie, PA
Posts: 649
I think disposable cameras use a one transistor circuit too.
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hsieh
Sat Jan 28 2012, 02:26AM
hsieh Registered Member #1412 Joined: Thu Mar 27 2008, 04:07PM
Location: Taipei Taiwan
Posts: 278
Chinese Wikipedia has a page for it. Link2

It says these converters are originally invented in Japan but copied by Taiwan and China manufacturers. And they are sometimes unstable.

I also found some related patents
Link2
Link2

My teacher(SMPS expert) once said that design them in fact required a lot of knowledge and experience or they may not work properly.
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Conundrum
Sat Jan 28 2012, 01:08PM
Conundrum Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061
Single transistor oscillators can indeed work, I have also heard of a variant of this being used on LED lamp replacements to save an expensive iron cored inductor being used.

One thing they do not like however is mains surges, as the transistor tends to short and then explode.

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