Provide Adequate Specifics About Your PSU To Customers
Embedded engineers are aware of the importance of providing necessary power supply specifications. Despite this, many of them fail to provide significant data in power supply specifications to their customers. Here are some tips to help you specify the right type of information to your customers.
First, you should mention the real operating temperature. It can be influenced by the location of the custom power supply and mechanical packaging of the device. The second consideration is the type of load. What kinds of loads will the custom power supply face- large ripple currents or reactive loads?
The third specific concerns the life time of your custom power supply. For example, how long will be custom power supply keep working? This is important because expected lifetime are different for industrial/commercial grade systems and consumer grade PSUs.
For example, if you are powering a radar or telecom system, you can expect the custom power supply to last for at least 10 years. On the other hand, if you are powering a personal computer, you can expect the power supply to last for 3 years.
Next, what kind of input line voltage are your expecting? Usually, embedded engineers will specify the unit (custom power supply) for universal input but if you are using it for an industrial or outdoor application, this may not be enough.
Don’t forget that knowledge is power. You owe your customers the professional courtesy of telling them all they need to know about the system they bought from you.
