Understanding The Purpose Of Some Electronic

Components In Electronic Circuits.

An electronic circuit consist of few or lots of electronic components for it to
function properly. The electronic circuits such as the power supply, vertical,
horizontal, high voltage, scanner, audio, color, memory, inverter, converter,
feedback and etc are the circuits that forms the purpose of electronic equipment. In
other words, different electronic equipment have different task because it has
different types of electronic circuits in it. This month article is about to reveal the
purpose of some electronic components in those electronic circuits. Lets begin and
analyse those components.

Relay
If you have repair electronic equipment before, I believe you have definitely seen a
relay in electronic circuits. Sometimes in a circuit can have more than few relays.
A relay is basically a switch operated by magnetic force. This magnetic force is
generated by flow of current through a coil in the relay. The function of a relay is
to open or close a circuit, when current through the coil is started or stopped. Now,
the question is why there is a diode located parallel to the coil in the relay as seen
from the schematic below?

The diagram shows how a signal diode (eg 1N4148) is connected across the relay
coil to provide this protection.

Current flowing through a relay coil creates a magnetic field which collapses
suddenly when the current is switched off. The sudden collapse of the magnetic
field induces a brief high voltage spikes across the relay coil which is very likely
to damage ICs and Transistors. The diode which is also called as protection diode
allows the induced voltage to drive a brief current through the coil (and diode) so

the magnetic field dies away quickly rather than instantly. This prevents the
induced voltage becoming high enough to cause damage to ICs and transistors.

Damper Diode
Whenever I draw the diagram of the high voltage circuit of a Monitor, many
times my students asked what was the function of the damper diode connected
across collector and emitter pin of horizontal output transistor (HOT). For your
information the damper diode can be found built into the HOT or in the circuit.
Because of the high inductance and interwinding capacitance of the yoke and
flyback transformer, the circuit must be damped out during retrace to prevent
ringing. In other word, the damper is used to prevent oscillation in electronic
circuit.

Note: Ringing means unwanted oscillation of a signal.

Zener Diode In FET

You may wonder why there is a zener diode connected internally between the drain
and the source pin. Mosfets are really sensitive to overvoltage (large voltage
spikes) conditions so, to prevent reactive load spikes from destroying your
MOSFET (when it switched off) a zener diode is commonly added across the
source to drain.

Note: For your information, in some electronic circuit, the zener diode can be
connected externally.

RCD Clamp Network

RCD means resistor, capacitor and diode. If you have seen a power supply
schematic before, Im sure you had came across such components that are located
besides the primary winding as seen from the schematic diagram below. The
function of these circuit (or components) is more or less the same like the damper
diode. Whenever the power FET turns off, the leakage inductance of the
transformer induces a voltage spike on the drain node. In order to protect the power
FET against (inductive) spikes from the transformer primary and to reduce ringing,
components R1, C3 and D1 are placed in the circuit. The amplitude of the spike
can now be limited by this circuit.

Conclusion- Of course there are lots more of electronic circuits in the market and
there is no way I can reveal all of them. May be you can take this article as a guide
to help you to find out the purpose of those electronic components that found in
your type of electronic equipment that you are working on.
The advantage of knowing such components in those circuits is that when you
want to design electronic circuits, at least you will know what type of components
you should put in that circuit. Even if you are not designing any electronic circuits,
at least you know the function of those components in the electronic circuits. All
right, thats all for this month and see you again next month.