25 Aug
2014
25 Aug
'14
12:43 p.m.
In the past when I?ve needed low inductance loads (for transmitter testing as opposed to
power supply testing), I?ve used carbon resistors in a jar filled with water. Water
cooled resistors can be dramatically overloaded without suffering in obvious ways. Wire
wound resistors of course can be had with higher power ratings so this isn?t so
interesting for power supplies. Still, if you have a set of plain old carbon resistors
you can arrange in parallel, and get to, say, 20% of the power rating you need, just dunk
them in water and test away. Even if you fry them, they will fail open (so no harm done)
and carbon resistors cost next to nothing.
paul
On Aug 25, 2014, at 3:33 PM, Marc Verdiell <marc.verdiell at gmail.com> wrote:
I use 10 Ohm 10 or 25W resistors, 2 or more of them in
parallel, depending how much current you want to draw. They look like white rectangular
bars. They have them on the shelf at my Fry's electronics store. For what it's
worth, on the latest power supply I tried, just one resistor was not enough to start the
supply, I needed 2 to draw at least 1A from the 5V and then it was OK.