ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Looking for a good portable power supply

I am in the market for a good manufacter or power supply thats portable for calibrating meters in the field, bench testing equipment, circuits and such. Any suggestions?

How accurate do you need it? What voltages and current?

I have a 450w PC power supply on my bench for doing some of these things.
You get +12, +3.3 and +5 VDC at pretty good amps. the -12 and -5 don't have much oomph.


I wouldn't trust it to calibrate a meter tho. If you really want a meter to be right, you need to send it to a lab.

If you are calibrating meters, what you want is a "voltage standard", not a power supply. I use one of these on my test bench at work:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/EDC-Model-M..._DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f1e20bfd8

Unfortunetly my employer don't buy used equipment

Since i'll be calibrating meters, it has to be accurate

If you are buying a brand new voltage standard, you may be spending enough money to make that lab I was talking about look attractive. How many meters are you going to be maintaining?
IBM did in house calibration but they had about 10,000 pieces of equipment to keep ISO 9000 compliant.

You also need to calibrate the standard every so often too (I am not really sure what that I9k criteria is these days)