Saturday, May 21, 2016

Furman PL-PLUS DMC Power Conditioner - Dead Eye Mod



The Furman PL-PLUS DMC is a power conditioner featuring Furman's serial, non-sacrificial power conditioning technology. It's a very nifty unit I'd recommend to anyone.

One issue that may drive some to modifications however is the voltage meter. It's easily off by about 2-4%. due to the use of a low-tolerance part.  This may sound pretty good, but consider if you are in an environment with slightly elevated voltages, around 125VAC.  You'll see 130 which is a cause for real concern.  This is exactly why I hacked this unit to be within 1%. Though less frequent in residential areas it's quite common in commercial locations (auditoriums, office buildings, parks).

Of course, any time that you work in a device like this you take your fate and that of your unborn children into your own hands, so this is not for the inexperienced stupid, or squeamish. If you don't know that you must disconnect the unit from the wall before working on it, just stop, stop right here.

Open up the unit and look at the meter board.   You will see resistor R10 that is nominally 2.2k. The voltage reading is proportional to the resistor value here, so if, hypothetically, the meter was reading high by two percentage points, adding a high value resistor (around 180k) in parallel would correct the problem.  If the voltage is too low though you'll have to replace R10. These are all low voltage parts, so you don't need to go crazy with high voltage, fusible, yadda yadda but something thermally stable would ensure correct readings even in warm road cases. $1 tops. You could replace R10 with a 1%, thermally stable resistor, this will give you the best reliability regardless of your environment. Not needed for me. :)

So if you are a traveling roadie and need a dead-accurate voltage reading, you know what to do.

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