Dave tears down the new Rigol DL3021 Electronic load and has a play around with it.
http://emona.com.au/products/electronic-test-measure/electronic-loads/dl-3021.html #.Wb7yY7Kg9hE
DIY Electronic Load: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xX2SVcItOA
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Hi, we're gonna take a look at Rygel's New Deal 30 21 or through Deal 3000 series electronic loads. We love electronic loads here on the Eevblog. I've done like a do-it-yourself electronic load video which I'll link in at the end and down below which is incredibly popular. People build their own, but you can't beat a nice commercial electronic load for power supply testing, battery discharge testing, solar cell testing, all that sort of jazz.

So let's take a look at it. Now this is the Deal 30 21. It's actually the bottom Ranger unit 499 US dollars which puts it about in the middle of what the commercial electronic load market companies like Kicker Soui make sort of. You know, the top shelf electronic loads.

this is on par with like you BK Precision's and your arrays and ITEX and ones like that and then you've got your much cheaper ones you know, name, clone, copy ones, your may new O's or whatever they are on eBay and things like that so it's somewhere in between. It's a 200 watt load, 150 volts, 40 amps. Now that don't confuse this with the deal 3021 IE On the end of it, the A model is actually 300 bucks more 799 US dollars retail and what do you get? Well having a look at the datasheet I'm the manual for this thing and the specs I'm having a hard time finding the difference. It seems to be the naught point 1 milliamp resolution read back current as opposed to 1 milliamps for the non A model, but apart from that they're both point oh five percent class electronic loads, which is what you expect in a precision DC electronic load In this price range 100 ppm.

they're all the same tempo. It's got slightly different ranges on constant resistance modes and things like that, but there's not much in it. I Don't understand why they make an A version. it's just stupid.

Just make the $499 a version with the A functionality extra. Whatever the hell that is, it probably doesn't cost you anything at all. Might be like software options or something like that. Just don't just make one model, thank you very much.

Anyway, this deals are the 30 31 as well. Once again, a non A version. It starts at 999 bucks, so a thousand bucks goes up to 1500 bucks. And the only difference in that is that 60 amps capable instead of 40 amps.

but it is 350 watts as opposed to this 200 watt model. So anyway, this 200 watt model good enough for say a larger solar panel. testing. Things like that, large battery packs, stuff like that.

Plenty capable for things like that. Now it's your traditional new Roy goal look and feel with these rubber bumpers on them. You ever like them or you don't they're like man, whatever. Okay, we're got a large screen on will power it up a later because we want to tear it apart first and we've got one knob on the thing and keep a derangement your various functions in here.

And they've put the sense terminals on your front, your binding poster USB on the front, and you know in cursor keys, whatnot in your various configures up the top. It's a reasonable layout, but just look at this thing. The first time I saw this thing, my head started like twitch to one side and I started to get a nervous tic because look at these bloody buttons here. Reverse italics buttons.
Look at them. Look at them. Whoever designed that should be hung, drawn and quartered. It's ridiculous.

The italics sloping backwards and the buttons sloping backwards. Why? Next up. I'm no graphic artists, but what the hell is up with the fonts on this thing? What is this function font look at like I I Think I posted this on Twitter A photo of this I Think somebody counted four, maybe five different fonts used on this thing. It's just insane.

The different fonts. like why? Why who designed this? They shouldn't be in the business. It looks like someone's just throw it up the font list. Illuminati Confirmed.

What the hell is that? What does that even mean? It's not even labeled. It's just creepy now. I Like the fact that they put the sets terminals on the front shrouded 4 millimeter banana plugs. but I would have liked just the old-school screw terminals as well.

So and sorry, but the binding posts are a complete and utter fail. Why do companies keep making that, do these electronic loads? They all seem to do it. Make ones with a no banana plug on them, No hole inside the thread, inside the shaft there so they can shove your wire securely in there. They just have these ridiculous dumbass binding posts like this.

They're so frustrating. Um yeah, you have to end up making your own little adapter to convert into what the hell you want. But check this out. This is kind of interesting.

You see the thread here I Thought AHA that might be surface some optional adapter. They actually include this plastic shroud in here which just has some cutouts at the bottom for your wires and that just sits on there. They got maintenance on there and that just it just attaches in there. The magnet over here is not great and then you can just screw that eventually like straight into there.

um, fir like. it's only 150 volt rated so it's designed for, you know, so you can't touch these things. but like yeah, I don't know? Okay, cute I guess nice touch. Now as for the key layout, it could certainly have been better.

I Mean you've got all your constant current, constant voltage, constant resistance, constant power, and and your other looks like there's a pulse mode, a toggle mode, a list mode, and stuff like that. So I don't mind that you know your on/off button probably should have been down like here next to your output or something like that. perhaps. Transient short is interesting I'm curious to find out what does it just short out the internal current shunt? Not sure what that is.

Anyway, you know your cursor keys, the knob here is not possible and oh, this, the italics ones up there or so triggering. Oh Anyway, it's okay, but they could have done better. and I like the dedicated application button here: Battery OCP and OPP I'm curious to check out the battery functionality for measuring your characteristic curves of batteries on the back made in China of course, but look, it's fun. Fully featured for the bottom of the range unit, you've got some digital I/o for our program below our control, switching and test fixtures.
off and on you've got your LXi LAN interface Fantastic. USB device or old-school Rs-232 serial current monitor output and voltage monitor output. Very handy for a hooking those up to the scope. Nice.

Alright, so let's crack this thing open. Just take the handle off the side and the four feet on the bottom and slides off just like most others and we're in like Flynn Jeez I'll have to sit it up for you, but yeah, hang on, we'll take a squiz. Whoa. I Tell you what.

This looks quite neat and tidy. I Really like it. We'll show you up close. It's hard to sort of get in here without taking the whole blinking a lot about.

like get detail on the board and get light in there and stuff. but I Really quite liked it anyway. Thermal wise, we've got our entry on the side here and here through the hole, the grille on the side of the unit, the fan inside then sucks the air from here, pushes it through our fin heatsink, which has all our power on there. You can see those down in there.

There's some on the other side as well, not even number, so that's interesting and just dumps it out the back. So the thermal design? that's as good as you can expect and this is the 200 watt model. So the upper model is the 350 watt model, so presumably it either has some more power devices on there. I Can see some extra footprints down in there.

There we go. It looks like it's going to have our the same heatsink and everything might drive the fan a bit quicker. We've got some extra footprints down in there, so maybe it's just a matter of extra power on the upgraded unit. in that case.

Why does it cost like four? This one's $499 the other is a thousand bucks. Why does it cost five hundred bucks more double to get the extra power? If all the heat sink in and everything else is like, you know, the rest of the design is going to be pretty much the same. Because it's 60 amps versus 40 amps like that's really gouging. Just make one model, just make the 60 amp model for 499 bucks and you'd kill the market.

Probably come on. But okay, it's got some extra power devices, you know and I don't mind paying for and like an increased power model with extra parts but not double? That's just no, not on. now. This is absolutely fascinating.

Look, they've used a PCI expansion board in there for all of your our I/o capability. That's really quite nice. I Like that. nothing wrong with PCI slots there and you know, readily available.
They're never going to go obsolete. They're used in too many things there. They're cheap, they're simple, They've got lots of contacts, They're reliable, They're proven everything else like. It's nice to see a PC I bought it in there like that.

That's off. Ok, our mains whirring. I Like the earth terminal going off there that looks are properly crimped and shake proof why should? No worries, that's all. Heat stroke goes onto the main.

PCB down here. that's the mains voltage selection. so they've been doing some main selection around there. You can see the high voltage isolation there slots in there very nice.

and then they've got that wiring going over over there running through their cable. tied nicely and that goes over to the reel clunking power switch on the front which is actually mounted on the main. PC could be so once again, that's quite like nice. They've left the tons of our isolation space in there, so no worries whatsoever.

Rygel innovation or nothing. Is this a new slogan? I Don't think I've seen that before. Anyway, designed in: China, they're quite proud of it and rightly so. They're doing lots of nice R&D And that transformer looks nice.

They're nice and last small linear Joby Because this is not a power supply, it's a load so it doesn't have to power much. it's just got a power all the a digital analog circuitry. that's it. So AC and bridge rectifier.

we've got our filter cap. We've got a couple of small heat sinks here. Have to me: I Get the thermal camera on those I Suspect because Rygel have goofed up that in the past. Although be careful getting the thermal camera on - just the anodized clear aluminium like this because your emissivity readings will be crap so you're better off maybe getting a thermocouple on there to measure that.

But of course the test would be the old finger test. Leave it on for a while and it shouldn't change with the what load it's producing and stuff like that. So as long as you can keep your finger on there, it's under 50 degrees. She'll be right.

no worries. So that all looks fine and dandy. You can see the high-voltage isolation cutouts there around the MOSFETs So yep, they know what they're doing. Nice touch.

And the electrolytic cap. That's simple. There is a Sam Young So there. Sam Young Kmg series.

You know me. par for the course. Now for the main chip in there. I'm surprised to see a Spartan 6 in something like this.

I mean they must be running like a soft core processor in there. I would be I guess in to do all this you know they could do it all in VHDL or whatnot. but yeah that my guess is is they're running some sort of a soft core processor in that but don't all the rest of it is just all the all the miscellaneous you know and logger doesn't You know it has the ADCs and the DAX and whatnot all around it, but that's uh, that's pretty much all she wrote. But the interesting thing to know it is this ribbon cable here of course goes off to the front panel board.
that's got another octo FPGA We have a quick look at that but the traces don't go off to the Spartan 6. Look, they bugger off all the way around here. right behind the transformer and everything else. they run in all the way around here, coming right to the back and go into that PCI card which controls that.

So maybe the processor is actually on the front board and that FPGA is just doing all the you know, the data acquisition stuff and things like that? Because because otherwise, why would you have the I/o card there flowing into the front panel board? So yeah, I take that back the Spartan sixes. It might still be run in a softcore, but it's a It's not doing all the main processing and display stuff and can't quite read that on the screen, but that's some sort of freescale a processor down in there. Is it holding the doing all the digital I/o stuff? I can't actually get this PCI card out without actually taking out the mainboard? It just does not come out. our jutsu the D9 connector serial connector on the back.

Bummer. it's for the front panel board down in there and active Pro ASIC 3 Here is that they've used a like an octal one and then a Spartan one as I links one. so you know two separate brands. They probably have different development teams working on these, so they just chose their flavor of FPGA Actually, given that there's only the active Pro a 6-3 FPGA on their Spartan 6 down there.

I Am going to say that that freescale processor down in there is the main processor for this thing, and in fact, they call this a digital board if you can see the text down in there. So it's not just an I/o board, this is the digital board. So this is the digital processor board for the whole thing. So that is the main processor.

kind of. You know. Not a bad decision to put it onto a PCI card like that. You can swap it out later without changing your main board that's you know, and your display board as well.

That's quite smart. now. as for the input over here, very very nice. I Love this.

and it's common that you'll find these on big loads like this. The huge binding posts, just huge bus bars directly out straight onto the PCB copper. Just massive pads, massive amount of copper on the PCB there. and it looks like we've only got the one current shunt resistor.

That one down there. you might be able to mind if you get the macro lens on there, but you might be able to see little tracers coming out there. That's the that's the pair coming out for the 4-wire sense. There we go.

should be able to see that just a couple of one pair coming out there. That's just the sense wise going into the sense amp down there. Now you might be thinking hey, this is a shut resistor that's a 4.7 ohm huge couple of what? What? Is that? The five? what job' or something I don't know. it's quite large power one and no, that is not a current shunt resistor that is not a low ppm current shunt resistance don't have to be accurate as I've said many times before, but they've got to have.
They've got to be very stable. so they've got to have a low temperature coefficient. This that looks like just a Joe Bloggs power resistor. So that's just part of some a snubber RC snubber type network.

They're happening so looks like we've only got the one current shunt resistor down there. Very low value. Joby Now whether or not that varies between the regular model and the A model I Doubt it. I think they're using the same current sense resistor I Like it.

well the sense network could change, they could get extra resolution, but I think it's just probably like a software type difference there. So this is the difference between they would be getting the non a model which we've got here has one milliamp resolution I believe and the A model has not point one milli amps so you know order of magnitude better. but they're probably still using the exact same current shunt resistor. You power fanboys? there you go.

International Rectifier can't quite make out that number on the LCD but I'll read that back. include the datasheet. There probably are like matching devices in there all the way along. so I've got it.

As I said, it's difficult to get this board out, so I'm not going to bother to see the other ones, but each channel has six of those, and presumably the A model with the 60 amp capability is going to have the extra two. so I would have eight devices per side. There's certainly being a bit how you're doing with the heat sink compound in there. Check that out! Geez.

So I'd like to go into more detail and trying to get that board out, but it looks a little bit ugly. I Don't I Don't think we're going to learn a huge amount more justify sit to say it suffice it to say that this thing is quite well design and manufactured. I Can't find any issues with this thing at all. So up.

yeah. I'm just excited to pair it up and have a little play with it. Not sure if you can see that, but the buggers have lasered off the markings on these four So8 packages here around the current sensor. Stop it.

Just stop it. And they've done the same bloody thing for the Op-amp around the MOSFETs there. Why? Ah, Unbelievable. Just see if we can see the other down in there.

not sure, can't see it on the LCD and that connected down in there obviously going off to the sense wires on the front panel. Got a real A notice, the isolation slot and also some input divider or and or protection resistors and once again, more high voltage slots. They're only 150 volts a You know you needn't do that sort of thing for those sorts of voltages, but hey, over voltage and stuff like that? No worries. but it does show.
Nice attention to detail and more slots cut around here. So yeah, somebody just went. Yeah! I put a slot in because that's the thing to do. and I'm not sure what's going on with those plated holes.

Input Negative: 1, 2, 3, 4 like I Don't get it because they're just one big copper pad with plated through holes. Um I don't know. They're not like current shunt jumpers or anything like that for big current shunts. Obviously some sort of extra mechanical interface which they didn't use.

They went for the other two big bolts down there. perhaps? Hmm. All right, so let's power this baby up and have a quick play around with that self-test or I go come on. you can do it.

Wonder what? OS it's running? Come on, it's only an electronic load. Self-test twiddle Farms twiddle thumbs and here we go. We're in like Flynn now. I Don't mind the inner fire since I'm not too bad.

It all displays the current, our voltage with four digit precision. Thank you very much. And we do get even though this is not the IE model, we do get the naught point one milli amps at least the display digit is there anyway. so that is definitely not point 1 million.

sweather or not, you know it could be as I said, just a software thing and it just counts up in tens and only has one milliamp resolution. I don't know. But anyway, I'm It displays our power and our resistance as well. So that's put it in constant current mode.

So range is here. We've got 40 amps and 4 amps so that doesn't give us it doesn't change our display resolution at all anyway, so that's rather interesting. Our slew rate our V on where it does switches on at our voltage limit 180 volts. it's 150 volt supplies.

So why it's 180 volts I don't know and a our constant current limit up to 70 amps. Once again, this is only a 40 amp supply. So what's going on there? And by the way, if I start using the knob, there is no velocity control. Ah, why, it's not hard to implement a proper velocity control for that.

That's just ridiculous. So I can just type in one like that and there you go. and I've got a press like one amp. there it is.

But like, give me a velocity control, it doesn't work on any of the input parameters at all. So on constant voltage range we have our selectable 15 volts or 150 volt range. That's all right, no worries, and our voltage once again, the knob is almost useless. It's only for fine control frustrating anyway, and we can set our voltage limit and our current limit once again and our constant resistance range.

There you go anywhere from what which anywhere down to 2 ohms on the 15 K ohm range. but it also has a 15 ohm range as well 15 AM range as well and our resistance can't go down to 80 millions their need and our constant power mode. We don't have any ranges on that, just fixed at the what level. So let's actually enter 200 watts cuz that's our limit.
Can we go above that? No, of course we can't. Boom Nope. uh-uh Setting has exceeded the power upper limit. thank you.

And we've got our other function modes here. Let's Continuous Config I'd I Like this, how it's all just coming up like that that is very comprehensive and Pulse Config I'd Once again, look at all the parameters you can set. very nice read apply how do you? Okay, we'll have to set those somewhere else presumably um, toggle config guide and then you've got the list mode as well. Automatically goes into the graph Here shows you all your relevant parameters in a quite decent font there and I'm liking this I really am.

It's quite neat. Anyway, the list thing is like a a step based us sequence type mode. you can go to useful for systemized power supply testing and things like that. Now what I really interested in is the battery mode and let's have a look once again.

Voltage and current displayed. Milliamp hours Watt hours which is what you know, the true capacity of a battery. Our timer there but unfortunately we can set the current. We can set our range from 4 amps or 40 amps.

We can set our stop voltage and set our current stop as well and now to or a timer based stop. but we can't set a stop value on our watt hours. Why not? It's just a software thing. It can only do milliamp hours.

You can't stop on what hours like and that's where it'll switch on with the on voltage. like just give me whatever 's Anyway, let's click the Illuminati button and see what that does. Oh, that's our graph. That's our graph.

You can start. Let's see, it's starting to accumulate there. So the unlabeled Illuminati button. Some people say I put this on Twitter and they said Isis CBS logo like I have no idea about see Yes.

So yeah, whatever. it's the Illuminati button. And yeah, we've got our graph mode. So that means that in when you're in, say constant current mode, you can do the graph so it's totally dependent upon constant power depending on which major in.

I Don't mind that I could have plenty labeled no. in the over modes is our over current our protection mode. you can just ask sequence like do a step sequence mode for testing now your supplies for power and current so that's not bad at all. I Like those three apps built-in and it looks like our on off button, There it is.

Load just comes up, trent up, presumably transient. and what a short do? Does it short out the terminals? I don't know what short does are CFM The most annoying part about this though is that I cannot select anything but constant current discharge. I mean what if I want to test constant constant resistance mode which is in the data sheets for our you know, toy testing and things like that. I can't do it I've got constant current only.

It's ridiculous. This is like just a software limitation. Why have a complete battery mode like this? If that's all you're gonna be able to do? It's ridiculous. Now for the finger test on these heat sinks down in here.
Of course this one's where we're not dumping any load into this at all. So of course that's completely cold. These linear rigs down here. back of the finger, hang on it is Rygel So died.

Yay! Yay! Yeah, let's to hot to touch. Unbelievable. Have they done it again? Okay, so that one there is eighty degrees? Come on. this is not a rocket science Rygel that is too hot for a simple linear supply.

I mean like the junction temperature has like is well above that. That's just that. Like granted. okay, we don't have the top in the case so we're like I can sort of put the case back I can.

Well, I can put something on the top and that's going to simulate the airflow. Let me do that. but that's just that's just wrong. I'm afraid that the one next to it there is even worse.

This one's up to 88. Ah, Unbelievable. Okay, I've put the lid on the top and you can see it going down. It's droppin.

I've got like just boxes on the top like that just to simulate cuz the air in the side of the intakes gonna be the same. Okay, it's getting down towards 75 degrees. so yeah, that's knocking like 13 degrees off, but that is still just no excuse for being that high for a basic linear regulator when you have all that space inside. It's just insane now.

and that's not to say that it's like you know, going to fail or anything like that. There's still margin inside. You know, the dire temperature of a 7805 or whatever can go up to what is it 120 degrees Celsius or something but there so it's not gonna fire it. I don't recall that being a nearly as bad as I think it was over a hundred degrees for the for the DP 832 power supply which they had to fix.

but come on. No, no, no, no no no. Now curiously, the Roy Goldy P83 two powers up much much quicker than the electronic load. Why they have judge I Can't remember the teardown, but they've changed our processes or whatnot and maybe changed.

OS I Don't know what's going on, but there's a huge difference. I mean that's fine, this one takes forever, but me, whatever. Now I've got it hooked up to the A3 2 I've got simple constant current load of 1 amp. We're getting one point double O4 over here and we're getting point 9 9, 7 8 That's like a discrepancy of 0.6% between them.

Um, what the? That's way out of spec Oh Dole I'm on the 40 amp range. Let's get up what turn off the load. You can't change ranges unless you I have the load turned off there. We go for ramp range.

No, it's exactly the same. Like assuming that let's just assume that it's one amp that's like 0.3% out. Point: Two percent out. It's supposed to be 0.05 percent plus 0.05 percent full-scale It seems out of spec and let's just check the voltage.
Twenty Nine Point Nine Seven Seven, and right on the terminals where it should be measuring at Twenty Nine Point Nine Eight. While it's not too far off, but technically that might be close to or out of spec as well. Okay, people wanted to know the current. well.

it looks like the DPA Three Two is bang-on One point Double O Five I'm not going to quibble one least significant digit compared to the seven and a half digit key side here, so we're gonna take that as absolute because yeah, its accuracy is like order of magnitude better or something than what we've got here. And we're getting Point Nine Nine Eight One that's out of Spec Rago Please explain. Okay, let's do our dreaded constant resistance mode. We've got to set to our ten.

Ohms. Let's switch on our supply here. and absolutely nothing I switched it down to 2. Ohms.

We're getting no hiccup in at all even though you can see that the 3 amp current limit is enabled on the DPA 3 - nothing's hiccup in no stable s And the short button does exactly what you expect. It shorts it out point 0 1 ohms so it doesn't do that with a relay. it does that using the inner using the MOSFET load to actually do that. Now, as for the graph functionality on this thing, the Illuminati mode.

It's there's no way like you can't like. There's no auto scale button or anything like that - just like auto scale. That in that would have been really nice. Please implement something like that just so that you can see the find tail in there and we can choose our data current.

U is voltage our as resistance P is power. Why can't we do the voltage and current on the same graph? Why can't we have another y-axis over here and do them in different colors? Yeah please. that'll be nice. And I plugged in my USB stick here.

it says it was detected and I'm gonna print. save an image. Great! I Love that feature. It's presumably hopefully but why failed? Why? Okay, let's try another USB stick.

Maybe it wasn't the right format or capacity or whatnot saving image. Come on. Unbelievable. Hey, check this out.

I was just log in here. I press the utility button. it switches off the bloody output. Look why? That's ridiculous.

Well yes it does the same thing. It doesn't do it for option, but it doesn't forced or you push the bloody store button and it's there anyway. Look, it looks like there's a D Drive there I presume that cow data is that the C is probably internal? How do we get to D like that is a D Drive there save I don't know. Okay, whatever.

what? what? Okay, I don't know. so we have to do D Do we have to select D before we did the bloody print thing? Is that what's going on here? How do you get rid of that? Oh wow, it's just ah yeah on okay print saving image. It's gonna work. This stuff failed.

yeh I think I Finally found a USB stick that actually worked. It just says saving image and saving Oh goodness yeah and it saves it in bitmap form Houck Wait, Okay, let's go into the utility here. Have a look at the all the interface stuff at GPIB nice USB Rs-232 nice or the requisite stuff and LXi land as well. That's I'm sure that'll work a treat and there's the firmware versions and stuff for those playing along at home.
Our system Boot time times. We've been booted 34 times. FPGA Version: all the requisite stuff last calibrated first to the ninth and yep, you betcha we've got software options. Land official, digital I/o high resolution official like I Guess that the A version have I been upgraded I don't know slew rate and frequency because they those three things.

The high resolution, slow rate and frequency seem to have been the major differentiate errs with the A version. So I don't know. Have I been given the AE version and no sticker on it? Um, install I didn't so maybe I have now. I Don't mind the list mode here.

It actually works quite good. Basically, you set the number of steps that you want is six maximum I'm not sure. Anyway, what can we go up to night heaps. So anyway, we can set it back to two so we'll go to steps and then I've set I You just used cursor keys over here just to set.

Okay, we want one amp. we're in constant current mode. We can change our range so we won't want it one amp for a duration of one second and then we want to ants for a duration of one second and circles I loop. You know how many times you want to loop through so we can now run that and it should.

hopefully? Nope. What's it doing? Oh well, why isn't it going under the next step? Hello McFly One other thing I Noticed, if you've actually got this on and you go to something else, it just it'll go to that mode and switch it off. You shouldn't be able to do that. That's just wrong.

You should. You know it should tell You sorry, You know you've got to switch it off because she usually when you switch it on you're doing something. you don't want to accidentally hit buttons and cause it to goof up. Now it looks like why this isn't working may the trigger.

It needs the trigger to go to each state. It doesn't automatically do it based on the duration. You can do trends transient I'm not sure what's going on there bus bus triggering is that like your interfaces your Rs-232 S and land and whatnot all your digital I/o interface we can feed in an external signal cause at the step through, but there's no like time-based mode or automatic or anything like that so that when we start this, it just stays in the same duration there and it's one second it doesn't automatically go to the next so not sure what's going on there. Artie If M maybe aha Tran Tran Button: Let's go there.

We go. Let's press it. Yes there we go. It's sequencing in through there you go.

you can see it sequencing through green on each. oh no, sorry cuz it only cycled through Huh? twice? We only had number two circles but there you go, you saw it. You can see construe nice and you can apparently are record that to USB as well. So if I go back, well no I just pressed on and then trans and boom boom boom boom boom boom and it should end.
And it ended. The recording. Did it. Let's see what we got.

Well that's lame. All it did was record the voltage. Why can't it record all the parameters here for each step? That's just just dumb. Ok I'm going to do a battery discharge test I've got a Duracell la Ultra in there fresh out of the pack.

you can see I'm using the our external sense lines here. I've just got it hacked in there a bit. how are you doing and I'm gonna do a very brutal one amp constant current discharge because you can't do anything else. You can't do constant resistance or anything.

Bloody ridiculous. Anyway, I've got the stop voltage set to nought point. eight volts I don't care about the time out I don't care the current time out I don't care about stopping point 5 volts turn on everything's hunky-dory It doesn't matter whether or not I go out of battery mode. It shows us mucking around just with one before just to make sure the setup works and it shows the previous info there.

It doesn't clear it even if I go in there and you know, change the change, the up or whatever look. Anyway, let's do it. Let's start at shall we? So here we go. a constant current discharge, one amp and we should.

Presumably these will clear the time, will reset and we'll start again. Let's give it a bill. There we go. All right.

Oh, it's dropping, dropping fairly drastically already as you'd expect because it's pretty brutal One amp on a poor, innocent triple-a cell. but anyway, it will eventually get a figure here. Now we can actually call up the graph. Okay, look there it is right.

It'll start, but we can't choose both like we can't get the figure like it's just like a We're like, why can't I have all the information on here and it resets the graph. What the hell is going on here like I can't do both. That is just ridiculous and we're done. That didn't take long at all.

Battery test completed I Assume I press Ok to get rid of that and there it is. Of course that the load is disconnected as so the voltage is actually recovering. It would have gone down to not point eight volts on the terminals of the battery because we are doing the voltage. since down here and there you go For the record: 263 milliamp hours or 0.268 watt hours for a 1 amp discharge on a basically one of the best doublea's you can get the Juris cell ultra.

So yeah, it's not great because triple A's aren't designed to handle one amp. constant current loads. That's just crazy, you know, and you'd use a triple-a or higher for something like that. But there you go.
it works. But yeah, it's It's crude and look, it's going to our graph. Where's our graph? Where's our data like it's just ridiculous record and dumped it to the USB stick. Damn it.

USB was not detected. We've got a press record. Okay, but to record like this I've got to be in the Illuminati mode right? So I've got like I don't know back. Can I like if I go out of there Is it? Oh no, it's still in record so maybe that actually works.

Maybe that is going to work here. We go. I'll start it again. Bingo.

There's a bit more capacity left in there battery of course. Juna the electrochemistry recovery in there Judith A very steep discharge, but hopefully we're actually dumping that to the USB stick so that'll be done in short order. We'll only get another few tens of million powers out of that puppy. Surely.

Okay, we're done. Didn't take long at all. We got an extra twenty three milliamp hours out of that. There you go, and once again, it's recovering and presumably if we go back to its record in like I don't know.

Do I just take the USB stick out like do I press unruhe cord? What do I do like I don't I think it's only going to record I'd be very surprised if it actually recorded this data. Well I think I'm going to call it quits on having a play around with this thing. For now, this was not designed to be a for reviewers just to tear down an initial play around and the kind of initial verdict is like like I Don't mind the design and build of it apart from that ridiculously hot one, not as ridiculously hot a 3d P83 to that heatsink inside there I Anyway, the design of the front panel isn't the best. Those fonts are ridiculous, but at the end of the day, that doesn't really matter.

it's about the functionality of it. I Was disappointed by the battery mode. Some of the other modes are, you know, and like it has all your basic load functionality. It would take by the way, a lot of work to extensively test all the different modes of a advanced electronic load like this one.

So yeah, that would like be a forty minute video in its own right. Think if I did that. but there's like just basic things missing from the battery. test their display mode and stuff the USB was.

it has to be a certain format and it didn't even tell me that it was wrong. and it's just there appears to be accuracy issues with this thing. Maybe more extensive requirements on that? You know? I'm like it's only an amp. It's not like a 40 amps or whatever.

it was like it. It should have been better than that. So I don't know what's going on there. Why go need to look at that? and I don't know.

There's just not a huge amount of spit and polish on this thing. It's like, yeah, okay, it's a load. It'll do the basic job, but there seems to be you know, quite a few issues with it, which they can fix in firmware, updates and stuff like that. But initial impressions are that it's just a run-of-the-mill electronic load really? Um, you know, being per buck, there are better ones.
Just you know, if you just want a basic electronic load, you can get one for two 300 bucks on eBay one of those ripoff brands and they do more than an adequate job just for a basic electronic load for testing power supplies or something like that. So at the end of the day, it's like nothing hugely to recommend this thing. yet it you know if it, they improve the functionality and solve the whatever accuracy issues it might have. And if they gave you the A model, all of it like I don't I presume that mine has the extra A functionality, but it doesn't have the label on there.

But those options are a ridiculous price. Like what was it? four hundred bucks or was it double or something just to get the A model? It's crazy. Just have one freaking model or maybe two if you want their difference between the 300 watt and the 200 watt model. Fine, but like it doesn't justify the price difference.

So no, they haven't got themselves a killer electronic load here. I'm afraid it's just me, another electronic load on the market. They've all got their own little quirks and issues and whatnot, and this one is no exception. So there you go.

If you like this, look at the row: Goal a deal or 3021 Please give big thumbs up full of frame thumbs up. And if you want to discuss it down below, catch you next time you.

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By YTB

16 thoughts on “Eevblog #1023 – rigol dl3021 electronic load teardown”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars CreativeTechno says:

    Not really a fan of these quick tests out the box.
    If you've not given the product a FULL test, you should really reserve judgement until you know how it works rather than just banging buttons and guessing.

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Mike Reuter says:

    Wonder if you add the two IRFP250NPbF if you get it up to 60AMP and 350 watts. Would be a great update

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Devil Byte says:

    Hello! I always watch your channel! I recently purchased a rigol dl3031a. She seems to be quite bearable. How can it be calibrated?

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars diX says:

    ILLUMINATI WAS IN THERE AND KEEPTS OFF OF GRAPH ! These illuminati man !

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars M Bak says:

    I wonder what an Aim-TTI load would look like?

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars MindMachine- says:

    I write in reversed italics. Both left and right hand so you can't say because it's one or another. To me it seems more natural, and it doesn't bother me at all seeing it done there. Looks cool actually.

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Osiris Ra says:

    The Illuminati or CBS symbol is an eye; meaning watching.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Niki Amzin says:

    Imdieyng

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars billybbob18 says:

    Those load elements need a CPU style heatsink and fan. A heatsink with REAL fins.

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Steven Bliss says:

    What is the obsession with IRFP250 mosfets for dummy loads, which have TERRIBLE SOA. What is the story?

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars jajjiejajjie says:

    What would be cool is if Rigol would just populate everything and the end user can purchase a software license later that would simply just enable the additional transistors. What would the added BOM cost be? Perhaps 20 or 30 bucks? My company (Keysight) does that with the various (Ixia) L2/L7 network traffic generator modules.

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Convolvulaceae 12 says:

    My company uses a Rigol DL3031 load. I took it apart and looked at it too. It is no different from Rigol DL3021. MOSFET quantity 10 pcs. The same IRFP250N. Maximum current limitation is performed by the program. These transistors are controlled by the MC33078 chip without marking. The shunt has a resistance of 0.0005 ohms. From this shunt amplifies the signal, the ADA4522-1 chip is unmarked. Still without marking, 3 chip OP27G. I haven't identified the DAC chip yet. If anyone knows what it's called, write.

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars NSV says:

    The 'one way' binding posts convinced me.
    Not buying this product based on such a terrible design that can't even use regular 5 way posts.

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars emilé says:

    "illuminati confirmed"

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Roman har says:

    80 Grad and this beside of the Elco !!!! – So is this the lifetime Counter?

  16. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars kay bhee says:

    we stopped lookin at rigol… stingy

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