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DIY Stompboxes => Building your own stompbox => Topic started by: ElectricDruid on November 27, 2019, 01:30:27 PM

Title: LF351 rail splitter sanity check
Post by: ElectricDruid on November 27, 2019, 01:30:27 PM
Hi all,

I'm going a bit bonkers staring at this. Something obvious is eluding me. I've got a LF351 single op-amp on the breadboard set up as a voltage follower. I've connected my 9V bench supply to a pair of 10Ks and a 100uF and then connected the follower to the midpoint voltage.

I get 9.6V supply voltage across the resistor divider and across pins 7 and 4 of the op-amp. I get 4.8V on pin 3 of the op-amp (+ve input) but I get **1.4V** on pins 2 and 7 (-ve input / output)!

What am I doing wrong? I'm going to feel like a right dork when you tell me, but at this point I just want someone to put me out of my misery...;)

(https://electricdruid.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/PowerSplitter.jpg) (https://electricdruid.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/PowerSplitter.jpg)
Title: Re: LF351 rail splitter sanity check
Post by: ElectricDruid on November 27, 2019, 01:53:09 PM
Ok, I've found it! And it was a "Doh!" moment.

Have a guess...
Title: Re: LF351 rail splitter sanity check
Post by: iainpunk on November 27, 2019, 02:07:28 PM
is it one of those weird opamps which have one or both inputs designed to be ground level biased while the output is at Vcc/2?

happened to me a few times when using random opamps from my IC stash
Title: Re: LF351 rail splitter sanity check
Post by: ElectricDruid on November 27, 2019, 02:52:24 PM
Yeah, you're on the right lines - it was the op-amp.

It turned out the LF351 op-amp from my tube of LF351 op-amps was actually an LF353 op-amp. The lettering was a bit worn and I must have stuck it in the wrong tube. Once I found a genuine '351 it sprang to life.

I thought about it some more, and figured that the circuit is simple, so there must be something wrong with the op-amp, so I started going through the tube to see if others in there worked better, and that's when I noticed.

There's a shadow from that blue wire across the exact bit you need to see, so you'd never have found it from the photo above.
Title: Re: LF351 rail splitter sanity check
Post by: antonis on November 28, 2019, 06:20:45 AM
Quote from: ElectricDruid on November 27, 2019, 02:52:24 PM
There's a shadow from that blue wire across the exact bit you need to see..

I was ready to blame you for using defective grill for cooked-to-order devices..  :icon_redface:
Title: Re: LF351 rail splitter sanity check
Post by: iainpunk on November 28, 2019, 08:06:25 AM
so.... no sausage for me