Audio Amplifier Using TDA2030A
Introduction: Audio Amplifier Using TDA2030A
This is small power (about 14~18Watt) audio amplifier utilizing TDA2030 chip IC which is now obsolete.
The TDA2030 was manufactured by STMicroelectronics that is joint electronic company between France and Italia.
But analog audio device production had been stopped and this audio chip is no longer available.
Meanwhile somehow I still have four TDA2030 ICs (maybe I bought these chips about 10 years ago and simply forgot to use) in my parts inventory.
Although you can’t buy TDA2030 any more, a general audio amplifier making method explain in this instructable can be still helpful to make other amplifier which using still available audio IC chip such as LM1875.
I’ll introduce other audio amplifier DIY project using LM1875 in another instructable later.
Let’s start story about making small power amplifier which can be used as PC speaker.
Step 1: Amplifier Schematics
Practically operational amplifier schematics can be found in the technical document of STMicroelectronics.
Or other useful amplifier circuit diagrams are quite abundant in Internet as TDA2030 was used to very popular audio IC chip for amplifier DIY before.
For example, the following web page shows diverse and detail instructions for making amplifier with the TDA2030 chip.
https://www.eleccircuit.com/tda2030-audio-amplifie...
By referring some information from Internet and STMicroelectronics documents, I’m re-drawing new amplifier schematics as shown in the picture above.
The followings are slight modifications from original schematics recommended by STMicroelectronics.
- Add-on 50K potentiometer (When output power of your music player such as PC’s audio output is relatively weak, use 20K pot for better volume control) for input audio volume control
- Using 1uF 100V (C1 in the schematics above) film capacitor as audio input coupling purpose
- Applying 220uF power filtering capacitor (C3 and C5) instead of 100uF electrolytic capacitor which is recommended by STMicroelectronics
- Adding 0.1uF ceramic capacitors (C8 and C9) for filtering high frequency noise from input power supply lines
- 4700uF of DC output smoothening electrolytic capacitors (C10 and C11) using instead of 2200uF cap recommended by STMicroelectronics
- Including 2 power indicator LEDs (D3 and D4) as well as 2 current limiting 1K resistors (R5 and R6)
Above modifications are not much critical and just included as personal preferences such as having visual LED power indicator, and anticipations for preventing high frequency noise from power supply lines by using additional 0.1uF ceramic capacitors and so on.
For example, originally recommended 100uF (C3 and C5) and 2200uF (C10 and C11) capacitors are quite OK for proper audio amplifying operation by TDA2030.
But using more high capacity of parts (such as 220uF and 4700uF) seems to make audio output quality more dynamic. (Maybe it can be personal impression. I can’t say any scientific backgrounds or proofs on this matter)
Therefore, several modifications mention above can be safely omitted when you want to make overall amplifier circuit simple.
Step 2: Amplifier Chassis Example and Used Materials
Maybe it can be called as plastic enclosure, simply as acrylic box, or acrylic board chassis.
Let’s call it simply as chassis from now on in this story.
What shown above is one of chassis design example for housing audio amplifier circuits shall be made later.
I’m using different shape of chassis design for the TDA2030 amplifier in this story.
Anyway designing and assembling chassis is very important as quality level of finished amplifier product is highly dependable to the perfection of chassis design and relevant workmanships while assembling.
For making acrylic chassis shown in the picture above, the following materials are used.
- Acrylic boards (Top/Bottom 150mm (H) x 200mm (W) x 5mm (D) 2 boards, front/rear 60mm (H) x 250mm (W) x 3mm (D) 2 boards)
- “L” shape acrylic board mounting and fixing metal brackets
- M3 (2. 552