Rigol DP1116A  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: London Lad
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2014, 06:23:29 pm
content: Has ant one done a tear-down on the Rigol DP1116A or even just looked inside ?I'm interested to see the build quality

author: georges80
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2014, 06:59:22 pm
content: I own one but haven't opened it up.What's it worth to you for some pictures eh?cheers,george.

author: georges80
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2014, 08:39:49 pm
content: Ok, in the spirit of the forum I opened up my dp1116a and took some pictures.Construction is quite good and it looks like wiring has been well soldered and heatshrink/wrap applied to appropriate areas. Certainly nothing scary to see and I won't be keeping a fire extinguisher aimed at itMore pics in the next post.cheers,george.

author: georges80
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2014, 08:40:14 pm
content: ok, few more pictures.I do like the front panel connections, hefty connectors, well flowed solder and you can see the small RC network they've soldered in between the output connector and sense connector.The heatsinks on the top main board and the base board are all oriented to catch the fan air flow at the rear of the case, so should be good from a thermal perspective.It's a reasonably spendy power supply, but given all the stuff under the skin, there's quite a bit of stuff that your $$ are paying for.I've been pleased with the supply so far, have been using it for a few weeks now.My #1 (and presently only) complaint is that the display update is woefully slow compared to what I'm use to from my HP supplies and even a few cheapie units. It appears that the entire display engine operates on a 1 second ticker, so depending on where an event occurs relative to that 1 second tick, it can take up to 1 second to see a load change.I use the supply primarily for test (and less so for development), so when I apply power to a board under test, I have to wait upwards of 1 second to see the actual current flow on the display. Doesn't seem like much, but when you're testing 20 - 50 boards you have to wait for each one versus a quick connect and move on to the next (pogo pin test jig).I've mentioned this to a Rigol USA app engineer at designcon in Santa Clara a few weeks back, but not holding my breath for any firmware update.I made a quick video to demonstrate the response lag to show them.cheers,george.

author: London Lad
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2014, 11:39:05 am
content: Thanks for the pics and vid George, that's exactly what I wanted to see.I want to 'thin the heard' of power supplies and I'm tossing up between this Rigol and an HP E3632AOut of interest do the 'analogue style' meters on the Rigol update at the same rate?

author: georges80
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2014, 04:22:35 pm
content: Yes, the update rate is independent of the display mode. The Rigol engineer seemed to think it was across the board, i.e. same update speed via the software i/f as well - which from my preliminary testing appears to be the case.My feeling is that anything that changes (voltage/current/ovp/ocp etc) only updates on the display every second. Button presses respond faster, so whatever software handles the button changes (on the display) creates an immediate display update event - otherwise it would have been obnoxious.The Rigol engineer mentioned the other Rigol supplies are likely the same (dp832 etc), though I've never seen one in action so no idea if that is the case.I was after something that could handle up to 10A in the 0 - 16V range and the DP1116A fit the bill. I do like the large display AND the accuracy of the displayed output (verified against a Fluke 8845A). The sense inputs are very nice and I made up a set of Kelvin clips/cables and that's a great feature since I can monitor input voltage/current/power and know that it is exactly what is feeding into a board - which simplifies doing efficiency measurements of my LED drivers.It is a very nice power supply and my only gripe is the (relatively) slow update rate. I have a few other power supplies, so I'll typically use one of my HP supplies when doing testing since they respond nearly instantly and for most of my testing the lower output current of the HP units is adequate.cheers,george.

author: London Lad
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2014, 04:32:52 pm
content: Thanks George, your information is much appreciated.

author: hugos31
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2022, 02:48:26 pm
content: how to update the firmware??