General > General Technical Chat
No SMPS projects for University and college students?
ocset:
Is it true that UK univerisites and colleges are banned from giving students <500W Hard switched SMPS projects for their final year project because of lack of jobs in UK for such work?
(speaking about HNC, HND and BEng and MEng courses)
I have heard (on the grapevine from a recruitment consultant ) that students who did such projects failed to find work, even if they were great students, and so the uni’s and colleges have stopped such SMPS projects?
I have heard that there are still projects carried out in eg >1kW Novel Hybrid Resonant converters, etc etc
Is this the same in other countries?
tom66:
No. Many of my university colleagues took a power electronics course of which part of the course was to design a small switch mode power supply, forward converter usually. This was in 2012 ~ 2017.
Power electronics engineering is a smaller field than general electronics engineering. It can pay well, but take much longer to find a good role. Many of these jobs have gone abroad, because there is little money in making lower cost SMPSes any more when they are usually imported as modules. But I know a guy who does SMPS design for a medical electronics company, based in Cambridge, so they are out there.
tooki:
--- Quote from: treez on July 26, 2020, 04:14:19 pm ---Is it true that UK univerisites and colleges are banned from giving students <500W Hard switched SMPS projects for their final year project because of lack of jobs in UK for such work?
(speaking about HNC, HND and BEng and MEng courses)
I have heard (on the grapevine from a recruitment consultant ) that students who did such projects failed to find work, even if they were great students, and so the uni’s and colleges have stopped such SMPS projects?
I have heard that there are still projects carried out in eg >1kW Novel Hybrid Resonant converters, etc etc
Is this the same in other countries?
--- End quote ---
:-DD
Here we go again, yet another treez thread about the UK/western conspiracy against domestic power supply manufacturers...
ocset:
--- Quote ---No. Many of my university colleagues took a power electronics course of which part of the course was to design a small switch mode power supply, forward converter usually. This was in 2012 ~ 2017.
--- End quote ---
Thanks, may i ask if this was a "paper" design, or producing a bench protoype?
Also, was the input mains electricity, or low voltage DC?
--- Quote ---Here we go again, yet another treez thread about the UK/western conspiracy against domestic power supply manufacturers...
--- End quote ---
Thanks, there are a few HV SMPS manufacturers in UK.
As far as general SMPS design manufacturers in UK...there are no big UK ones left......there is a small one near Birmingham which is actually UK owned i believe.(?)
There is TDK in Barnstaple, which of course is a brilliant place, and is Japanese.
There is XP power near Reading, which is another brilliant place, and is USA owned,
tom66:
Bench prototype. Usually limited to 48V SELV due to health and safety restrictions. But there were some PhD students working on mains voltage motor drivers.
TBH if you can make a flyback or forward converter work on 48V you can make it work on 230V AC. You just need higher voltage rated components, and perhaps learn a bit about bootstrapping circuits and tweaks to transformers at higher switch voltages. I don't really see that as stopping them.
You listed two major engineering companies in the UK that design PSUs. Clearly someone is being educated to work there.
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