SPHP Dragons

ATTENTION! SPHP users please read this.

As you know, SPHP is a high power voltage regulator. To quote Spiderman's Uncle Ben (who was quoting Sir Winston Churchill), “With great power comes great responsibility.” Please note the following and be careful during design and testing of your power supply:

Use extreme caution with high voltage circuits, this circuit can deliver lethal voltage and current. Keep one hand in your pocket!
There is no internal limit on output current. With 10+ amps, SPHP is unforgiving of mistakes and is quickly destroyed by an output short circuit or other incidents. If possible, use an inexpensive monolithic substitute for new product design, then replace with SPHP when design is fully functional. The IN/GND/OUT pins on positive SPHP controller and GND/IN/OUT on negative SPHP match LM78xx and LM79xx pin connections for temporary substitution.
Output voltage is factory adjusted to 12V during testing. If your system is designed for high voltage Vout and thus has high input voltage, adjust SPHP to the desired output voltage under NO LOAD. In other words, if you power up SPHP under load with 12V output but Vin = 80V (for example) and load current = 5A, that puts the regulator output transistor under 340W load until Vout is adjusted to its correct value. This will destroy the output transistor and probably the regulator controller.
Vout adjustment is reverse of convention— clockwise decreases Vout, counter-clockwise increases Vout.
For best transient response, place a 100Ω resistor between base and emitter of the output power transistor.
For best stability across all load current, place a 0.1µF polypropylene capacitor from Vin to GND pins near the regulator PCB.
SPHP has two internal protection diodes, however they are small SMD devices. If your application has large capacitance at regulator input and output, two external high current protection diodes (e.g. 1N4007) from [Vout to Vin] and [GND to Vout], [given anode to cathode], will improve long term reliability.
The Superpower data sheet has a special section discussing SPHP and our web site has detailed application information on SPHP usage. Read it before requesting support.