Steve Anderson wrote:Not quite correct Harry, many parts are made in China that are just fine. Those under supervision of a reputable company, Fairchild, Microchip and many, many, others with a proper Quality Control program. Those in the video are an obvious out-and-out scam (The TO3 packaged ones). The guy with the TO220 devices I think it is simply not having a heatsink - also no small (100n) caps on the input or output quite possibly leading to instability....especially with an inductive load (motors).
Any case Steve i will add that advice to my shopping searches next time ! i tend to look at reply's as to what other people have said about the parts this one had nothing
Those LM338's you bought, you cannot see if there's actually a chip inside without an X-Ray machine. Or simply they're all just duds.
Caveat emptor - Buyer beware.
Yes i did think of smashing one open but i came to my senses and thought i would try a lower power supply on a few and see ....This time it worked fine on a few tried so there is a regulator init ...this pleases me at least so far its as good as a LM317 ....Next i will test it with a 24 volt supply from the phonoVision project see how they hold up ...i hope i just had a few duds in the batch if not these are not up to the LM338s standard ...i will Test tomorrow .