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Showing posts from March, 2012

LM317T Voltage Regulator Circuit with Pass Transistor

This is the schematic diagram of voltage regulator circuit with pass transostor. The regulator is based regulator IC of LM317T. The LM317T output current can be raised by utilizing an additional power transistor (on circuit, it is 2N2955) to share a portion of the total current. The amount of current sharing is established with a resistor placed in series with the LM317 input and a resistor placed in series with the emitter of the pass transistor. In the above scheme design , the pass transistor will start conducting when the LM317 current reaches about 1 ampere, due to the voltage drop across the 0.7 ohm resistor. Current limiting happens at about 2 amperes for the LM317 which will drop about 1.4 volts across the 0.7 ohm resistor and make a 700 millivolt drop across the 0.3 ohm emitter resistor. Thus the total current is limited to about 2+ (.7/.3) = 4.3 amperes.