I love this power supply, I brought the bare bones kit from Maplins many many years ago. Had it running for many years. I also did look into making it digitally controlled and changing the displays to an LCD.
After many years service and messing around with, I did look at building another one to make it a dual power supply 0-60V 0-10amp but the cost of the parts I decided not to and brought one.
Now I've seen this it's gave me the bug again to start it all again. The only trouble is the good old LM723N chip is getting harder and harder to find, Lucky for me I found a batch 0f 50 for sale so I brought them
.
Now I've been looking at revamping it and making some modifications to it to bring it into the 21St century, Shame they discontinued it.
List of Mods depending on my testing goes.
1. Get rid of the big transformer and switching relay and use an AC/DC converter.
2. Get rid of the parts that make the 18V supply and use a DC/DC converter.
3. Make it digitally controlled setting the voltage via keypad/Pots by using an 12/16Bit Dac
3A. may consider a rotary encoder or multi-turns pots.
4. Have the power transistor's mounted on the same PCB to bolt straight to the heat sinks that I already have.
5 Make it to channels but only 5amps each rather than 10 as I never used higher than 5 amps really.
6. Have one graphic display colour TFT screen.
I've laid out the PCB 100X100mm (get them made in China) with everything the same as the original design just in case my changes I make do not work I can build it has the original spec. Below is a copy of my pcb which I'm just double checking and tidying up to be done. Where the bare copper is I shall add wire and more solder to help carry the current, Track with is 4mm.
Any comments/suggestion's welcome