LM317 adjustable voltage Regulator

Description

Continuing on from our tutorial about converting an ATX PSU to a bench power supply, one very good addition to this is the LM317T positive voltage regulator.

The LM317T is an adjustable 3-terminal positive voltage regulator capable of supplying different DC voltage outputs other than the fixed voltage power supply of +5 or +12 volts, or as a variable output voltage from a few volts up to some maximum value all with currents of about 1.5 amperes.

With the aid of a small bit of additional circuitry added to the output of the PSU we can have a bench power supply capable of a range of fixed or variable voltages either positive or negative in nature. In fact this is more simple than you may think as the transformer, rectification and smoothing has already been done by the PSU beforehand all we need to do is connect our additional circuit to the +12 volt yellow wire output. But firstly, lets consider a fixed voltage output.