Dick
Cappels' project pages
http://www.projects.cappels.org
Return to
HOME
(more projects)
A Portable
Precision Voltage Reference
A plenty accurate, nearly bullet-proof voltage reference
The voltage reference chip is a
surface-mounted part under the board.
Most of the parts are to protect the
voltage reference chip.
Introduction
It has been said that a man with one watch knows what time it is, but a
man
with two watches is never sure. The same can be said for a person
who has more than one voltmeter. In my situation, I have several
voltmeters in each of two different locations a third of the way around
the world apart. The best solution would
be to send the meters to NIST traceable calibration labs, but
that's too expensive for me. Eying some of the semiconductor
manufacturer's web sites, I saw that modern-day precision semiconductor
references are accurate, stable, and inexpensive, so I bought some.
Here is how I hooked them up.
I went looking for a reference chip between 1 and 2 volts, so I could
check the calibration of my digital voltmeters on their 2 volt scale.
The Maxim MAX6168Am a 1.8 volt, 5 parts per million per degree C
reference was appealing, but I was not able to find one available i
small quantities for delivery soon enough for my purpose. After
shopping around, I settled on the National Semiconductor LM4140-1.0
precision voltage regulator, which I was able to buy from Digikey for
$3.58 each.
The National part, specifically an LM4140CCD-1.0-ND is specified to
have
a nominal output
voltage of 1.024 volts, within 0.1% -that's accurate to within
about 1 millivolt. The temperature dependent drift is better than 10
parts
per million per degree C, and the aging drift is less than 60 parts per
million for the first 1,000 hours. Since the accuracy is within
one digit of my best meters, it is more than adequate from my
anticipated purposes.
This basic circuit should be useful for many of the other series
connected voltage reference chips out there, though it might be a good
idea to change the 78L05 voltage regulator to one with an ouput voltage
appropriate for the particular regulator, and to similarly change the
output protection zener to one with an appropriate voltage fo the
particular regulator used.
The
Circuit
Most of the circuitry is there to
protect the LM4140 from the user.
A keyed power input connector, series rectifier and a shunt rectifier,
both 1N4007, prevent reverse voltage from being applied to the power
input. A 27 volt metal oxide varistor clamps the voltage to the 78L05
that follow it, to less than 30 volts, thus protecting the 78L05. An
input voltage of between +9.0 volts and about +24 Volts is needed to
power the 78L05. The 78L05 in turn, provides 5.0 ± 0.25 volts
for the LM4140 precision reference. This has two important benefits:
The 78L05 keeps the input to the LM4140 from exceeding the maximum
rated input voltage of 5.6 volts. It also keeps the input to the LM4140
constant, thereby removing up to 300 parts per million of output
voltage per volt of input voltage of input voltage sensitivity. A 3.3
volt zener diode across the LM4140's 1.024 volt output limits the
maximum voltage that can be applied to the LM4140's output by an
accidental contact.
This circuit would work well with other voltage reference chips
as long as the input voltage for the reference chip is compatible with
the output of the three terminal regulator and of course if the
reference voltage was significantly lower than the output protection
zener diode's zener voltage.
Varistors are uncommon parts in some labs. The varistor on the input
can be omitted, or a zener diode of the appropriate rating could be
substituted.
The LED and its associated 2.2 k resistor are only there to indicate
that the circuit is on. It too can be eliminated without affecting the
performance of the rest of the circuit.
Construction
The circuit was hand wired on a piece of phenolic board with one pad
per hole. The parts were arranged so only one jumper, which was run
across the component side of the board, was needed.
The most difficult part of the construction was the mounting of the
small 8 lead surface-mount LM4140. It turned out that I could
place the package on the pre-etched pads on the phenolic board, but I
had to split
the pad that leads 6 and 7 attached to because they aren't to be
connected together. Using a new X-Acto Knife blade and made two
paralled cuts across the copper doughnut, and removed a thin slice of
copper to form a small gap between the pads. To soldering chip to the
pads, I put a tin coating of neutral
PH flux on the copper pads, tinned the pads with solder, removed the
excess solder with a flux soaked piece of wire braid, then carefully
and tediously nudged the package into position then tacked one corner
lead down. After several iterations of tacking, inspecting, moving,
etc., I managed to get the chip tacked
down in the right position, then went around and heated the rest of the
pins, adding solder where it looked like it was needed. The solder
blobs on some pads appeared when I connected wires to the pads.
The other components on the board were connected by bending their leads
over to leads of
the other parts they were to connect to, and soldered in place.
The hardest part was mounting the
tiny
surface Mounting package. The pad that
pins 6 and 7 are soldered to was split
into two half doughnuts before mounting
of the part.
Once the circuit had been built up and tested, I added four metal
standoffs to hold the board off the workbench, and then cut a small
piece of phenolic board to shape and hot-glued it to the back of the
circuit board to protect the LM4140 and the wiring from being
accidentally physically damaged. When applying the hot melt glue, I was
careful to run it around the perimeter of the back of the board,
keeping it off of the LM1440 and component leads as much as possible. I
went around twice, building up a rim to hold the phenolic board off of
the circuit board. As the glue had hardened, I placed the small piece
of phenolic board on the rim and added more hot melt glue to hold the
board in place.
Results
I measured the LM4104 on my two Fluke digital voltmeters, both about 10
years old and not calibrated since they left the factory. I was amazed
to see that they both measured
1.024 volts. Another voltmeter, made by a manufacturer whose name one
would recognize,
measured the LM4140 as 1.031 volt. So, at this point, I would tend to
believe the Flukes.
I
have an older voltage reference, which was based on
Design Idea article in EDN Magazine back in the 1970's -its an LM723
voltage regulator chip connected so that the internal pass transistor
acts as a heater, and the internal current limit transistor serves as a
temperature sensor, so the chip could provide a stable temperature for
the on-chip zener reference voltage. Back on March 1, 1979, I
calibrated this
against a
differential voltmeter with calibration traceable to the NBS (Now
NIST).
I had set the output of this LM723 based reference to 1.00019 volts. I
connected this LM723 based reference to a bench supply and watched it
on one of my Fluke DVM's. After a minutes of warm-up time, the reading
settled at
1.000 volts.
This result tends to reinforce the belief that the two Fluke
voltmeters are right on, and the lesser brand is also pretty close.
More significantly, based on my older LM723-based reference, the new
LM4140 based reference is accurate to within a millivolt. My faith in
National Semiconductor's specification for the LM4104's accuracy was
also reinforced.
With them I can calibrate my
test equipment and my projects, and more importantly, know more
accurately what voltage values are in circuits I am testing. This is a
bigger deal than it might first appear. Often, I'm left wondering what
happened to the odd few tens of millivolts when my measurements don't
add up. Now, I'll have a much better idea of how much of that error to
assign to the meter.
The precision reference can also be used with a low-offset opamp and a
precision resistor to make a precision current source, which could come
in handy. It could also be used to generate other reference voltages
using a precision divider in a opamp's feedback look.
With two of these LM4140 references, I can have one at each of my two
locations, and if need be, bring them together occasinally for
comparison.
Example: Summary of accuracy of my DVMs on the 2000 millivolts
scales:
Meter
Name
|
Location
|
Measurment
|
% Error
|
Fluke 1
|
Arizona
|
1.024 V
|
0%
|
Fluke 2
|
Arizona
|
1.024 V
|
0%
|
Noname
|
Aroizona
|
1.031 V
|
0.6%
|
Yugo
|
Thailand
|
1.025 V
|
0.1%
|
DT-803B
|
Thailand
|
1.018 V
|
-0.6%
|
Micronta
|
Thailand
|
1.030
|
0.6%
|
I think using the Fluke metres in Arizona, I don't have much to
worry about, but
now I see there is a 1.2% spread between the two meters I use most in
Thailand,
and I need to take this spread into account.
HOME (More Projects)
Contents ©2005 Richard Cappels All Rights Reserved. http://www.projects.cappels.org/
First posted in August, 2005, updated February 2012.
You can send email to me at
projects(at)cappels.org. Replace
"(at)" with "@" before mailing.
Use of
information
presented on this page is for personal, nonprofit educational and
noncommercial
use only. This material (including object files) is copyrighted by
Richard
Cappels and may not be republished or used directly for commercial
purposes.
For commercial license, click
here.
Liability Disclaimer
and intellectual property notice
(Summary: No warranties, use these pages at your
own risk. You may use the information provided here for personal and
educational purposes but you may not republish or use this information
for any commercial purpose without explicit permission.) I neither
express nor imply any warranty for the quality, fitness for any
particular purpose or user, or freedom from patents or other
restrictions on the rights of use of any
software, firmware, hardware, design, service,information, or advice
provided,
mentioned,or made reference to in these pages. By utilizing or relying
on software, firmware, hardware, design, service,information, or advice
provided, mentioned, or made reference to in these pages, the user
takes responsibility to assume all risk and associated with said
activity and hold Richard Cappels harmless in the event of any loss or
expense associated with said activity. The contents of this web site,
unless otherwise noted, is copyrighted by Richard
Cappels. Use of information presented on this site for personal,
nonprofit
educational and noncommercial use is encouraged, but unless explicitly
stated
with respect to particular material, the material itself may not be
republished
or used directly for commercial purposes. For the purposes of this
notice,
copying binary data resulting from program files, including assembly
source
code and object (hex) files into semiconductor memories for personal,
nonprofit
educational or other noncommercial use is not considered republishing.
Entities
desiring to use any material published in this pages for commercial
purposes
should contact the respective copyright holder(s).