Vero Layout for Tiny Giant Amp (12V) REDUNDANT THREAD

[gcme93]

Hi All,

Taylor has VERY kindly allowed me to share my Vero layout for his ever popular Tiny Giant amp: http://musicpcb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Tiny-Giant-Build-PDF-rev2.pdf (schematic that I replicated is found here. Useful for those who want to add the LM338T regulator in for 19.5V laptop wall-warts)

It has a great PCB already designed for it which you can find here: http://musicpcb.com/pcbs/tiny-giant-amp/


But I much prefer Vero!

I've looked through dozens of these layouts but this is the first one I've designed entirely so please help me check it out more for mistakes!

All improvements and suggestions are encouraged too.

N.B this is for 12V EXCLUDING the voltage regulator as I primarily designed it for my own use with a 12V lithium battery.


Unfortunately I don't have the time to build this or verify it for quite a while :/

Any feedback greatly appreciated!


EDIT - Photo link removed as layout is unsuitable for use! It was designed by a novice (myself) with little idea about possible oscillations, feedback etc.

George

[psychedelicfish]

From my own personal experience, I would seriously recommend not building IC based power amps on vero. If you are dead set on building it on vero, you will need the input, output and power supply filter capacitors physically as close as possible to the chip, otherwise you will get instability. With instability, the amplifier will probably oscillate very loudly, and may cause the chip to die in a multitude of ways and/or destroy your speaker. If it doesn't oscillate, the instability will cause distortion, and it will sound quite bad. If I were you, I would just buy a PCB, they're cheap enough, and you won't get these sort of problems.

[gcme93]

From my own personal experience, I would seriously recommend not building IC based power amps on vero.

...If I were you, I would just buy a PCB, they're cheap enough, and you won't get these sort of problems.

Thanks Edward, I'm very glad you've been honest with your advice here, and I'm going to take it.

It's a shame not to be able to vero it (I always feel like PCBs are cheating a little, not as much fun designing), but ultimately I had a good lesson or two in making my first layout, and its probably best that no one builds it anyway! It was a bit scrappy with several work-arounds.

I had some idea by the fact that I'd never seen Vero for amps over 9V, but I didn't know why until now.

Thanks a lot! (pic of layout removed to stop people making a dodgy circuit)

[slacker]

Not redundant at all

I'd agree with Edward the way you had laid it out wasn't great, the flying leads could have caused problems but I don't see why you couldn't do a vero layout for it.
The legs of the chip are probably long enough that you can splay them out and connect them to the vero 7 in a row, or in a couple of rows with enough room to get to each leg, I've done this with similar 5 legged ICs. Then there's no reason you couldn't mount the caps and stuff as close as you can on a PCB.
Might be worth buying a TDA7240A and experimenting with different ways to get all 7 legs into the vero making sure you have space to attach the heatsink and go from there. If you can't make it work you can always buy a board.

[gcme93]

Thanks for the encouragement Ian, but I think this one will be a bit of a push for my abilities. I thought my layout was so compact there wasn't space to fit the caps on anyway!

I enjoyed doing a quick design, its almost like a little logic game, but for now I'm sticking to pedal builds on other's vero designs. I'll look into the amp side of things when back from Uni and with a bit more time to delve into the depths of it all.

I may well retry it then, but otherwise I'll just buy that PCB. Very cheap shipping anyway!