Mean Well ELG 150W teardown

i popped a ELG-150-36A a while back with overheating it constantly.

decided that in the name of science i would destroy it even further.

here is the link to the full res album: https://imgur.com/a/fVMnFP0





















the pcb is made from cheap fiberglass. but all the components are the highest quality you can get, rubycon 105c caps and so on.

separation is basically perfect, input filtering is textbook-with-cherry-on-top. even put a shield on top of the brain-box,

i dont see how a HLG would be of higher quality. prehaps a nicer pcb or something. the only difference i can see between a HLG and ELG would be the casing. this is folded aluminium and a HLG has extruded aluminum. but i expect they are basically identical from the inside.

How did you manage to constantly overheat it?

Bolt 2 of them together and let them run for days on end at full load in a small box with basically zero airflow.

Did get a new one from mouser...

It'd be interesting to see how much those 2 pots can change the output. Before it reaches the cap limit.

Its a voltage divider and the range is set by 2 resisitors on the bottom. That combined with the brain box sense range set accordingly makes sure the supply can only work inside that range, it will trigger a OVC or LVC and shut down.

I assume the range is much wider but efficiency tanks outside it. Other components like the transformer are optimised for a voltage range.
I have no doubt it can operate on a wider range but it will overheat. There is not a single heatsink directly connected to the outside.all the heat has to go tru the potting stuff.

did you found out why it stopped working?
A frind has HLG 185 and it also stopped working. It permanently did overheat, so i think those PSU's generally should be set a bit lower as the rated watts.

Thsy can take the rating, as long as you have half-decent ventilation around it.
Those 105c ruby's dont die so easy but they will eventually, if nothin else dies first.

In this case the diode blew.

And downrating a psu or overspeccing its use is always better.