Electronics > Beginners
constant current source design
Zero999:
--- Quote from: Arjunan M R on June 04, 2019, 04:45:00 am ---If I use matched pair transistors does i have to use emitter resistors?
--- End quote ---
You should be able to get away without them or using much lower values, especially if the transistors are well thermally coupled. Try it.
Arjunan M R:
I will just use 2N3904.
I am going to use a 49.9Ω emitter resistor.
When I was simulating it in LTspice I saw that if you choose resistor with low resistance like you said(22Ω) the difference between the collector current of each transistor increases so i chose 49.9Ω.
Zero999:
--- Quote from: Arjunan M R on June 04, 2019, 01:45:55 pm ---I will just use 2N3904.
I am going to use a 49.9Ω emitter resistor.
When I was simulating it in LTspice I saw that if you choose resistor with low resistance like you said(22Ω) the difference between the collector current of each transistor increases so i chose 49.9Ω.
--- End quote ---
LTSpice isn't very good at simulating this, because it assumes the transistors are identical and are at the same temperature.
Arjunan M R:
I have changed the temperature.
Tom45:
Since you don't need much accuracy, why not just use a simple 1 transistor current sink.
The circuit below uses a 2N3904 and 3 resistors. Testing shows that it works down to 0.2 volts.
Current was about 1 ma at 0.2 volts, up to about 1.2 ma at 25 volts.
If you don't have 5 volts available, just recompute the base bias resistor divider for whatever voltage you do have.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version