Tiny and Transluscent Chip Amplifier - TATCA

Amplifier

TATCA was an effort to use up bits from old electronic equipment lying around, together with Bell & Daniel's chipamp kits, and enclosed in something a little different - well at least I like to think.

This was always a form-follows function design. My intent was to show off the internals by using clear plastic for the enclosure panels, but other than that just to make it small and simple as possible.

TATCA is a power amplifier using the LM3875 kit, with seperate PSU housing. I decided to connect the two via a custom umbilcal cable using 15 pin D-type connectors.

Almost eveything was stipped from old amplifiers, PC motherboards, and other aged electronic equipment.

The whole chassis stemmed from the two heatsinks stripped from an old Cambridge Audio A1 amplifier. The built PCB's were mounted onto the heatsinks and from this the top and bottom plastic panels were cut and attached to keep them together, followed by the rear connector plate and remaning panels.

It was made just large enough to fit a stepped attenuator in as well, although it was eventually swapped in favour of a pot for finer control.

Power Supply Unit

The PSU is housed in a seperate aluminium enclosure. The umbilical carries all the power required on the board, the return earth connections, and power for the LED which comes from an additional winding on the toroid transformer. The umbilical is approx 6" long and was also DIY fashioned.


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Copyright © 2006 Vikash Chauhan. All rights reserved.