A Noise-Free DIY Switching Power Supply - How Hard Can It Be? 

This is an unbelievably great video. The early mistakes and making incremental changes to show what each change does.. Nice. For new EEs this is invaluable. Great video!

It would be really interesting to see what difference a 4 layer PCB would make, with the ground plane shifted up to layer 1 (just below the top layer). Rick Hartley often makes the point that the bottom layer of a 1.6mm PCB is just too far away to be truly effective, and that there's almost never a good time to use 2 layer PCBs for EMC management. The prepreg separating the top two layers would typically be less than 0.2mm thick.

I quite like those PCBs with clear solder mask. They're helpful for seeing traces, but they also look great.

Great video. I love the way you show how there’s more to the project than just connecting the pins.

Pours are the means to an end. The end is low impedances between nodes in the power path where switching currents flow *and* small loop areas. The best-performing layout can still be improved. Ultimately, with a 2-sided board, it’s possible to close the current loops with loop area projecting sideways through the board, and it’s possible to get the on and off state current loops at right angles to each other. For some hints as to how that may work, look into multiphase converter app notes where they really emphasize small loop areas on the layout. Components on two sides of the board can make a big difference. The resulting volume is still the same or better.

Great Video - You explain stuff in such an easy to understand way James! Love your work!

Helpful to see the comparison between each successive improvement, particularly when the 2nd gen looked to be worse. Good job

If there's a suggested layout in the datasheet, it's there because reasons. The manufacturer did the hard work for you. I'd still probably add a bit of LC filtering on the output to clean up the remaining noise.

Great video. Switch mode design is a specialty all it's own. Infact i know someone who has spent his whole career designing switch mode and he is at the top of his profession and still struggles with emi problems. He's almost had to dedicate most of his ongoing learning to that. Hes told me about testing the design in different attitudes, temps, humidity; controlled and relative. It's definitely an artform.

Now this is a VERY good video for explaining how this works. So many new makers makes these mistakes on power supplies. I have done it myself. Several times.

Conclusion = Introduction to Power integrity Very nice video thanks for the educational content

Another great video and this was very informative. Thank you.

That was very educational! Thank you for this!

Great video and thanks for the reference files

This video randomly pop up on my recommendation, but im very grateful it pop out since im always confused why all smps design use pour instead of trace and how to design one, you answer all the questions i have about smps, thank you, gonna subscribe to this channel

Incredible. Thank you.

Excellent lesson, thanks.

I once built a flyback converter on a breadboard. It worked. Until the output capacitor became loose. Then the USB unplug sound sounded a bunch of times as USB connections half a meter away were killed due to interference. But other than that, if you try to minimize parasitic inductance, resistance and capacitance in the critical sections, it should be fine to test a SMPS design on a breadboard before making a permanent PCB. Just make sure the connections are solid. It would be interesting to actually see a breadboard version of the circuit from this video.

Amazing, as an ameteur I learned tons of stuff in 10 minutes. Thank you.

such nice video, congrats!

Great detail! Similar, if not the same I'm thinking generally, for RF designs... with more details to consider the higher in frequency you go I'm thinking since every trace is like an antenna with LCR characteristics to consider.

Very Helpful

Great explanations, thank you.

amazing video, thank you very much

Really great structure to this video. I almost shouted at the screen at your first attempt, then I realized what you were doing. ;) Excellent tutorial method. A board I would have liked to see is one that uses the final parts placement, but rather than fills, using VERY LARGE traces. Like 5 mm, and following the same "route" as the final copper pour method. I suspect it would perform somewhere in the middle, but just how bad? I also suspect that may be another path a beginner might take, not knowing about or understanding how to do copper pours.

This is gold, any more PCB design tips videos comming soon?

Great video!

James is in the zone today.

Thanks for sharing.

Good job, explained well without the usual hype

great video!

Impressive improvement

i have this same issue and you just saved my board!

Great video, one of the best i have ever seen on this subject ! but If I can't trust my dmm, it would have been interesting to compare the results with a good one, Fluke 289 or UT181A multimeter to.

I've been designing power supplies for 30 years .. WELL DONE ! Too many scammers wiring SMPSs on perfboard.. that won't ever work unless you are switching at 60 hz haha

Wow ... this is amazing. Like and subscribe. I was searching for a power supply for a DIY amplifier that doesn't make any noise nor interference ...

awesome video, simply said..

Nice video, good pacing! I usually need to speed it up, but this was good at 1x. It felt aimed at noobs a little too much here and there. This was a missed chance to explicitly say "never, ever use autorouting". I'd like to see how a 4 layer board compares. I use SIG/GND/GND/SIG with power routed on 1 and 4. I use JLCPCB's stackup that has 0.0994mm prepreg between 1&2 and 3&4 with a thick 1.265mm core, since it doesn't cost more. It'd be interesting to see how that compares to 2 layers and to the typical SIG/GND/PWR/GND. I use 4 layers on all my boards, as the cost isn't much more and I think JLCPCB does a better job than they do on their $2 2 layer boards. FWIW, I use 0.3mm/12mil traces only where I need small traces, otherwise I use 0.6mm/24mil everywhere and 0.8-1mm/32-39mil for routing power. It's doesn't really make routing any harder, so I don't see any point to using smaller traces unless there is really no room.

Great video and project! 🙂

Designing an amp[s] capable filter for the output of this would be another nice challenge... simple low pass, pi filter, how much current a simple op amp design could provide

To be honest I think using pours for power and ground should be the default. Especially ground. There's no cost to using as much copper as you can!

Very interesting

How do you best get started with designing your own pcbs and circuits?

I've designed switchers successfully. It's a PITA. The board you show is still likely to have EMC problems. You really want a 4 layer board, with high currents or fast-switching pulses separated from their return paths by only the thickness of the prepreg, not all the FR-4. But (inless you're Rick Hartley), you can seemingly do everything right and still struggle to tame the things.

Now I'm curious... could you link up a large ground plane, like a separate PCB, to an existing board and get an improvement?

Sorry, how can you create PCB? Do you use a website? Thanks

4 PCB design in under 11min? wow!

1:20 COMMON! You could have *at least tried* We want to know what happens if you do it anyway! My prediction is it would """work""" but not very well. Be noisy AF, and possibly unstable with horrible ringing and stuff around the switching node.

So in summary make traces as short and as thick as possible, and also make a ground plane, I think this is a good advice for any PCB, but with high frequencies is a must. Does long and thin traces work as small inductors in high frecuency circuits?

nice... nice...

subscribed

Great one as long as it's DC/DC, AC/DC on the other hand will take a hole lot more than just layout best practices, specially if you bring up the inductive spike subject. I enjoyed this one and looking forward for more 👍

Wow, this is really scary, I never expected SMPS designs requires extremely careful PCB designs as well for best efficiencies. I was assuming just learning the math and SMPS theory will make great high efficient SMPS devices, well this video just showed its not the case since proper PCB deign also needs to be considered which is also complex. Excellent video in explaining to get best efficiencies and why it's crucial to properly design the PCB layouts and implementations for the SMPS design.

Ok, so lets discuss how a Surface power supply would go about eliminating switching noise. Looking at the attached drawing, I've captured a generic switching regulator on the left, and have it's output [ Vin ] feed into an EZ81 vacuum tube rectifier [ pins 1 and 7 ]. Output of the EZ81, nice clean DC, as shown [ Vout ]. How is possible ? Let me disclose what is not seen here. What is not seen here, the vacuum gap between plates and cathode of the tube. The DC voltage will forward bias the rectifier, thus plate current will flow. However, the switching noise does not jump to the cathode, due to the free-air-space between plate(s) and cathode. What does it cost ? First, you need to supply the filaments 6.3 volts, at about 1 amp. Also, in this configuration, series plate resistance on the order of 180/2 ohms. So there is some insertion loss to factor in. However, if the application does not require current sourcing up to 1 amp, other tubes could used, and you would save on filament power. Also, some care is required to set this up, with the dual inputs, or you can red-plate these tubes. I would also recommend some type of simple BITE circuits to keep an eye on tube health and performance. You set this up right, these tube last almost forever. . . . . ..... ... . . ...... Side notes. I show output filter cap at 100uF. The data sheet for the EZ-81 states 50 uF max. So, why do I run output filter cap at 100uF. It goes back to understanding how data sheets are written. You see, the EZ-81 come out in 1956. At that time, the biggest filter capacitors back then, were these wax and paper rolled jobs, max value was 47uF. So, this is just a guess, but I would say they were saying this tube could handle the biggest cap available. The higher capacity electrolytics did not come out until the mid 1970's. Secondly, there is no issue with surge current for two reasons. 1. This tube rated for 0.5 amp continuous, per plate. 2. It takes about 12 seconds for this tube to warm up, and gently ramp up to full conduction. I even ran this tube feeding a few 1000uF caps over a few days. It did not care. Why? Because a vacuum tube is not an active electronic device. It is a mechanical device, with - certain - electrical - properties. It does not generate any waste heat internal to the device, because is a vacuum between plate and cathode. . . . . .... . .. .... . . .... . . . ... . ...

What if I use a breadboard BUT shove the critical pins together in the same holes to avoid capacitive coupling?

Good introductory video. Thank you. Viewers should be aware that designing an efficient and quiet SMPS, which passes EMC testing, is quite a bit more involved and nuanced than what is shown in this brief video.

Very good video with very little views.

"autorouted (lol)" "baldengineer" i chortled

How much inductance did you end up with at the switch node? I almost did a project like this, but I was deterred by FUD about the transients blowing the mosfet. I did some simulations and, you'll blow up an 80V mosfet with 40nH of parasitic inductance at 4A. How huge were the transients, really, at the drain of the mosfet? I have doubts that you probed it where it would have shown the true transient when the mosfet turns off.

Hi. I need to drop 1.2V @1A. Doing this linearly is really easy. But the P-CH mosfet gets too hot to touch and I don't like that. Also it is not very efficient. All these SMPS buck converters need at least 2.5-3.0 V above target voltage to work. They can't regulate for example 6.2 down to 5 volts. Do you know of a solution for this? I also don't want to go the buck-boost route cause that's inefficient as well. Is there a very low voltage drop out buck converter?

one of the biggest keys to a decent layout of a switcher, is to visualize the size and paths for the current flow. A 3 amp switcher often has nodes with 10 A plus spikes

Damn… and her I thought Kicad was pronounced “keycad” for the longest time 😮

The color black is what? If not the solder mask

In the old days i designed SMPS from literally components. Just getting to the point of just making an output measurment was a big deal. The battle started by just trying to keep the switching FETs from blowing up. LOL dont ever want to do that again thank goodness for modern day and fun video BTW glad i stopped.

Second failed board is a classic example of Murphy's law; you should be expected not to be too surprised, apparently.

It would have been even better if you had taken the step to optimize the PCB layout to get the best performance out of it.

Not bad but you stopped one step too soon: you didn't optimize the component placement to shrink the hot loops. You can also optimize trace placement so that the feedback signal isn't picking up noise from the inductor, and so that filter capacitors aren't sitting out at the end of stub traces, and so on.

Yes yes yes plz from Total scach house hold items?

When is thicker traces or using couper pours a problem due to their higher capacitance?

after dark

I'm going to channel my inner Rick Hartley and ask you the question: where is the energy in a PCB? Answer: it is in the dielectric space. When current flows an electromagnetic field is formed. That field spreads through the dielectric space looking for a return path of the lowest inductance. If that return path isn't ground/power then it is another signal. In the analog audio world that might present as oscillation or crosstalk. Once you getting into high-ish speed switching all bets are off. Also, the manufacturer's datasheet is as good as toilet paper in a lot of cases. There are layout and stackup suggestions that are fundamentally wrong, but it just happened to work in their application. Unknowing designers use those suggestions as gospel and perpetuate bad design practices.

It's also possible to integrate KiCad with freeroute without ever quitting kicad, no need for a 3rd party tool.

10:03 how hard is it to DESIGN a SMPS PCB ? Well, doing the layout is one thing. Choosing the components and their values is another one.

Noise-free? I think you forgot the bit where you add a ferrite bead pi filter to really drive the output ripple down ;)

Excuse me sir i want to ask, there is only R1 that without a value, can you tell me how much the proper value for R1 is?

Are these mistakes that common? At least since i started designing PCBs myself i never even considered using traces for power transmission or removing ground planes and such, always thought that it was the logical thing to do. Gotta ask in my department

*"...noise free..."* I thought that about my X wife so I doubt this is any different

why is this still on my wall ?

how hard..? lol what could go wrong?

hello sir. i dont get it.. this board is smps 220v Ac to 5vDC ? because i need it so bad..thanks.

nice.... but we needed far better, so went to linear power supply

i think kicad v6 does have autorouting now

You did not give any indication of the target noise that you would need to attain to pass the CE tests.

Now make full pc SMPS of 2000watts

bro i hate auto router

Good effort but yet another video that has absolutely no clue on how to correctly meassure a dc converter/use an oscilloscope.

its supposed to be "key-cad" - thats the right way to say it, right ?

Audio too quiet

Manufacturers prefer you have as MUCH COPPER AS POSSIBLE, because it costs them to REMOVE COPPER!