[volt-nuts] Power Designs Precision Power Supplies

Marvin E. Gozum marvin.gozum at jefferson.edu
Sun Apr 22 17:57:32 UTC 2012


Hello all good folks:

A little bit off topic, but this defunct company with a heyday from ~ 
1950s-1980s made very good bench linear PSU, including a line called 
'precision power supplies', something more labeled precision voltage 
sources today.  However, the precision series was capable of 0.5-4A output.

A user could dial a VDC set precisely to uV levels on most voltage 
ranges, and could hold its dial setting to single digit uV for ~ >= 8 
hours, but to 100uVs over a month.

I'm interested in anyone who can give their impression of the history 
of this company, their experience with their products, or have 
advertisements or scans of their catalog of equipment during their prime.

 From what I've gathered, they were in business making PSU from 1950s 
through 1996, and were known for performance, quality, and low 
cost.  The precision units up to the early 1970s were all discrete. 
They declared bankruptcy by 1996, reorganized in CT [ they were in 
upstate NY] as Technipower, became insolvent by mid-2000s and finally 
sold and integrated their wares with Unipowerco.com.

HP made a short running line of precision power supplies in the early 
1970s that met or exceeded Power Designs capabilities.  They were 
also more costly.  Today, I can't find anyone who manufactures a 
bench PSU with these specs today.






More information about the volt-nuts mailing list