5 Volt power regulator

10/04/2007 5 Volt power regulator
I decided to use 12 Volt DC instead of 5V DC to power lighting circuits on the layout. In order not to have to rewire my signal box I decided to employ a 5 Volt power regulator to feed just that building. For the tractor shed I will simply use a larger resistor.

Here is the 7805A regulator mounted on a heat sink and with two 0.1µF capacitors ready to be installed. I think the capacitors were made in June 1950!

A quick bench test confirms that I do get 5.02 Volts out when I apply 12 V on the input.

It probably would have been easier and cheaper to simply place 10 diodes into the circuit. Each diode reduces the voltage by 0.7V so 10 would drop the voltage by 7V from 12V to 5V.

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