Automotive Circuit Protection - Part 1

[Garfield Willis]

On Fri, 23 Jun 2000 12:52:48 -0700, garwillis at msn.com (Garfield Willis)
wrote:

Some errata/clarification:

>Diodes normally fry from thermal cycle failures these days.

To avoid confusion, I should have been more specific and said "ALT
diodes normally fry from thermal cycle failures". Wasn't at all making a
sweeping generalization for all diodes, just ALT diodes in this case.

>This is enough of a major issue that the main Chip houses that design
>the regulators, all have various "load dump" protection schemes they use
>to promote their regulator chips overNabove their competitors.

Also please note that when I said "regulators/regulator chips" above,
I'm referring to ALT regulator chips, the ICs inside the ALT that
control the field winding current. We'll discuss "voltage regulators"
for our own circuitry, that may also have load dump protection built in,
but those are a different animal. So in the "Part 1" discussion, when I
said "regulator", I always had in mind the special chip inside the ALT
that does the ALT regulation job, by switching the field current onNoff.

Hope that tidies things up better.

Gar


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