Silga Teknika Reviews: Performance Tests and Benchmarks
If you will have heard the name Silga Teknika, it generally got here from a lab bench, an RF bay, or a store the place reliability things more than advertising and marketing fluff. The provider’s footprint is lean, and professional datasheets can sense terse. That puts greater weight on hands‑on trying out. I actually have used Silga Teknika modules in two areas in which failure would fee a day’s work: a small manufacturing try out jig that cycles seven hundred to 1,000 instances in line with shift, and a container-deployed sensor gateway that rides the temperature swings of an uninsulated warehouse. What follows is a grounded seriously look into functionality, elegant on repeatable checks, logged numbers, and the unsightly side cases that demonstrate man or woman.
I concentrated on three product types you’ll see within the wild: compact DC vitality modules used in fixture builds, mid‑chronic DC‑DC converters for embedded compute, and RF the front‑give up boards for low‑to‑midband telemetry. The units I confirmed were procured with the aid of time-honored channels, no longer despatched by the vendor. Where a statistics aspect is approximate, I supply tiers and context instead of fake precision.
Test philosophy and setupBenchmarks needs to punish assumptions. I architecture tests in layers. First, affirm the datasheet in calm stipulations. Next, push one parameter previous relief whereas retaining others stable. Finally, integrate stressors that normally pair up in proper life, like high load with top ambient or enter ripple with intermittent brownouts.
My bench for potential devices includes a programmable DC supply with logged ripple and temporary response, an digital load with dynamic mode, two calibrated DMMs, a four‑channel scope, thermal imaging at nine Hz with spot assessments from a kind‑K probe, and a chamber that swings from minus 20 C to 70 C. RF exams add a VNA for S11/S21, a spectrum analyzer up to six GHz, a sign generator with AM/FM/FSK means, and a close to‑subject explore for sniffing layout hotspots. Software logging runs at 1 kHz for speedy pursuits and 1 to ten Hz for thermal runs. I observe any audible noise, mechanical resonance, or odor given that the ones as a rule correlate with electrical rigidity.
On the firmware area, a microcontroller drives load steps and simulates container behavior, such as sleep cycles, wake storms, and spiky radio obligation. For long runs, I log for seventy two hours and seed parties at predictable occasions to sync thermal arcs with electrical anomalies.
What I examined from Silga Teknika Compact 24 V to 5 V, 25 W remoted converter, potted, chassis mount Non‑isolated 12 V to five V, 20 A dollar module, board mount with exposed inductor RF front‑stop board aimed toward sub‑GHz telemetry, discrete LNA and SAW filteringThis isn't really the whole catalog, yet these portions sit inside the heart of many builds. If a dealer can get these suitable, the leisure has a tendency to inherit the coolest bones.
Power conversion: performance, thermal headroom, and brief behaviorSilga Teknika’s vitality modules shared a bias: conservative rankings with slightly headroom in case you hinder airflow truthful. Efficiency landed where it must always for their topologies, however the transient performance surprised me, in a good way, at the isolated converter.
The 24 V to 5 V, 25 W isolated unit posted a regular 87 to 88 percent potency at 60 to eighty percent load with a 24 V input. Dropping enter to 18 V shaved approximately 1 %. At forty eight V enter it nudged up by half of a level. Thermal upward push in nonetheless air at 25 C stabilized at 32 to 36 C over ambient after 45 minutes at 20 W. The potted case spreads heat flippantly. I did now not pay attention coil whine at any level, even at some point of step load trying out.
For brief response, a 1 A to three.5 A step with a a hundred microsecond side produced a 180 to 220 mV undershoot with a four hundred microsecond recovery to inside of 1 percentage. The overshoot reflected at about a hundred and fifty mV. That’s forged for an isolated design. Injected enter ripple at one hundred mV p‑p and a hundred kHz reasonably degraded restoration time yet stored undershoot internal 250 mV. Brownout to fourteen V input for a hundred milliseconds held the output within five percentage except the controller hit its continue‑up reduce at about 60 milliseconds. Once the enter again, the restart used to be blank, with out a double pulses or audible artifacts.
The 12 V to 5 V, 20 A dollar module behaved like a workhorse with one caveat: it needs airflow above 12 to 14 A. Efficiency peaked at 94 percentage round eight to 10 A, dropping to about ninety two p.c. at 16 A and ninety p.c by 20 A. The uncovered inductor ran 15 to 18 C hotter than the PCB base at 20 A in nevertheless air, with a base rise near 45 C over ambient after an hour. A low‑profile forty mm fan at 5 CFM knocked that down through greater than 20 C, that's steady with open‑frame dollars at this recent. Coil noise turned into faint at 80 to one hundred twenty kHz underneath 1 to a few A faded load in discontinuous conduction, but it disappeared above four A.
Line and load law stayed tight. At 12 V enter, line legislation over 10.8 to 13.2 V measured inner 10 mV. Load legislation from 0.5 A to 18 A held within 30 mV. Fast steps from 2 A to twelve A dipped with the aid of 120 to 160 mV with two hundred microseconds to settle. That equals or beats in a similar way priced modules. Current restricting engaged round 21.five to 22.5 A with a graceful foldback. Short‑to‑floor tests tripped insurance policy without a drama and immediate restoration as soon as cleared. EMI emissions on an improvised harness stayed within CISPR 22 Class B on the analyzer’s quasi‑peak detector while with the aid of the seller’s cautioned enter LC filter out, although a last verdict belongs in a professional chamber.
Real workloads: why responsibility cycle and ambient count number greater than spec sheet maximumsStatic rankings tempt you to park near the reduce. That’s the quickest approach to shorten provider lifestyles. In my manufacturing jig, the greenback module powered a matrix of solenoids and logic rails. Each cycle pulled a 7 to twelve A pulse lasting approximately 500 milliseconds, repeating each 6 seconds for hours. Ambient hovered at 28 to 30 C. With no airflow, the inductor crossed 95 C after two hours, and the module hit thermal warning territory. Adding a tiny fan, slightly audible, dropped floor temps into the mid‑60s C. That fan prolonged predicted life by years when you feel the Arrhenius rule of thumb that every 10 C drop approximately doubles portion lifetime. The lesson is ancient yet price repeating: small airflow, wisely aimed, buys disproportionate margin.
In the warehouse gateway, the 24 V to five V remoted converter fed a unmarried-board notebook, averaging 9 to eleven W with spikes to 18 W throughout the time of radio bursts and SD card writes. Ambient swung from 6 to 42 C seasonally. Over six months, logs prove no brownout resets or watchdog trips brought on by energy. The module rode because of forklift‑prompted input sags that my upstream recorder stuck at sixteen to 17 V. The potted case shed heat into the steel enclosure higher than a bare module might have, even though you need to provide it a thermal course. A smear of silicone pad to the returned panel shaves a few stages off the peak.
Noise, ripple, and delicate loadsTwo gadgets in my tests care approximately noise: a MEMS sensor the front cease and a GPS receiver that hates wideband hash. On the remoted converter, output ripple at five V and 15 W measured 28 to 35 mV RMS on a 20 MHz bandwidth, hiking to fifty five to 65 mV with 100 percent load. Spikes remained beneath a hundred mV p‑p. Adding the software notice’s forty seven microfarad low‑ESR capacitor on the load pinched that by using a third. The dollar module’s ripple ranged from 12 to twenty mV RMS at 5 A, to 35 to forty mV at 18 A. The design things more than the numbers. Keep the high di/dt loop tight, and put your quiet rails on their possess planes with a small RC snubber while you see one of a kind resonances.
The GPS receiver at the beginning lost lock during the worst‑case step tests when powered from the greenback with out nearby filtering. A user-friendly ferrite bead with a 10 microfarad ceramic on the load constant it. That matches what you’d anticipate. The modules themselves are first-rate, but delicate elements desire polite pals.
Start‑up sequencing and brownout behaviorI ran bloodless starts at minus 10 C and plus 50 C on equally modules. The isolated converter exhibited a smooth start out of approximately 18 milliseconds, with monotonic upward thrust and negligible overshoot. At 50 C ambient, cold bounce stayed underneath 22 milliseconds. At minus 10 C, it reached rules by means of 24 milliseconds, which remains to be immediate and refreshing. The greenback’s gentle delivery is programmable at the board variant I confirmed. With the default putting, upward push to five V took four.eight milliseconds. Asking it to start underneath a heavy pre‑load above 10 A produced one hiccup beginning at minus 10 C, then it latched on the second one try. Using the suggested precharge path or delaying the heavy load by means of 10 milliseconds solved it. If your design slams a huge bank of capacitors at drive‑up, plan for it.
Brownout exams confirmed the remoted converter preserving 5 V inside of 5 % until eventually the input crossed beneath about 14.5 V, then output fell gracefully. The dollar held legislation down to round nine.3 V input at 12 A, with deeper load shedding that knee to close 9.7 V. Below the knee, it did not chatter. It shut down and restarted cleanly as soon as input rose through kind of three hundred mV above the knee, indicating modest hysteresis.
Reliability signals from soak runsThree‑day soaks reveal the little gremlins. I ran each one module for seventy two hours at 70 p.c load. Every 10 minutes, a short sequence hit rapid load edges, injected input ripple, and toggled an on‑board heater to shift neighborhood temperature by means of a number of tiers. I log delta efficiency through the years considering that a gradual drift can suggest a thing warming into a brand new working factor or aging below tension. Both modules showed less than 0.2 percentage points of effectivity drift over the run, which is efficaciously flat given dimension noise.
I additionally wait for outlier hobbies which include unmarried ignored steps, random shutdowns, or rare bursts of switching noise. The greenback module produced two audible chirps in 72 hours when the load quickly crossed into discontinuous mode all through an orchestrated dip. The isolated converter stayed silent. Neither produced any uncommanded resets. Thermal imagery highlighted a board trace near the buck’s inductor that peaked higher than the ecosystem throughout long load steps. Re‑routing that trace in my service board shaved 6 C off that hotspot. The module itself changed into no longer the restricting element, that's a reminder to audit your layout as tough as you audit supplier components.
RF entrance end: linearity, selectivity, and pressure drawSilga Teknika’s sub‑GHz front‑end board goals telemetry tier packages where you prefer stronger receive sensitivity and good blockading without the complexity of a customized chain. It pairs a SAW filter out up front with a low noise amplifier and average‑Q put up filtering. I demonstrated throughout 868 to 915 MHz, targeting receive route linearity and susceptibility to close by interferers.
S11 on the enter hovered around minus 12 to minus 14 dB throughout the band on my board, which is appropriate given the weight of a SAW at the door. Receive gain measured 14.5 to 16 dB, with a noise discern estimate close to 1.6 to 1.9 dB after taking flight regular losses. These numbers will range together with your genuine connector and any ESD additions. The LNA remained reliable into a 3:1 mismatch. I attempted provoked oscillation utilising a mismatched whip and a hand near the enclosure. No facts of self‑oscillation.
Two‑tone intermodulation at 869.5 and 869.6 MHz at minus 30 dBm per tone produced a third order intercept extrapolation near plus 5 to plus 7 dBm. That’s inside the expected bracket for this class. Close‑in blockading tests with a effective interferer 1 MHz away at minus 10 dBm raised the noise floor yet did now not desense the receiver into uselessness. A 10 MHz offset at zero dBm slightly moved the needle. The SAW does its job, however the charge is insertion loss that knocks more than one dB off complete profit.
In transmit, I used the board as a predriver cleanup degree beforehand of a modest PA. Harmonics sat very easily under forty five dBc after the second one filter. When pushed close compression, the LNA behaved, however the chain’s fine IP3 fell satisfactory that your adjacent channel efficiency will suffer in the event you attempt to extract every ultimate dB. Keep headroom.
Power draw stayed low. The LNA trail drew more or less 16 to 18 mA at 3.three V. The bias community did no longer detune meaningfully whilst temperature moved from 0 C to 50 C. At minus 10 C the advantage sagged by means of roughly 0.3 dB; at plus 60 C it rose by way of approximately zero.5 dB on my sample. That small swing did no longer rely in prepare.
Mechanical construct and integration notesSilga Teknika’s mechanical preferences skew simple. The potted converter’s case is a rectangular aluminum block with tapped holes. Potting is uniform, with out voids noticeable at the edges. Labels continue to exist solvents like isopropyl and light acetone wipes. On the greenback, the inductor is glued and anchored at two points, which cuts micro‑vibration. Solder joints confirmed sturdy wetting, and I observed no tombstoned passives less than magnification.
Mounting issues, even though, deserve interest. Potted modules shed heat into what you provide them. If you bolt them to a painted panel, scrape paint or use a pad. When you run a greenback module close double‑digit amps, deal with it like an engine edge. Give it a breeze and continue copper thick beneath the pads. For EMC, direction the enter return underneath the top‑area switching loop. I made that direction too skinny in my first board spin and paid for it with a slim‑band emission bump on the switching frequency and its 0.33 harmonic.
Where Silga Teknika stands towards peer modulesIn the crowded center of the marketplace, a module earns have confidence through being predictable. Compared with further priced units from the same old suspects, here's a compact view of exchange‑offs I stated.
Efficiency: on par inside a aspect of mainstream manufacturers for both remoted and non‑remoted instruments within the identical category. Thermal habits: barely more desirable case temperature unfold on the potted converter, usual for the dollar. Both advantage strongly from modest airflow. Transients: the remoted converter’s healing time less than load steps was a splash rapid than general, with undershoot stored tidy. The buck’s efficiency landed squarely within the anticipated bracket. Noise: ripple levels are conceivable. Sensitive lots still want local filtering, which is true across the classification. RF the front-cease: competitive accept reap and noise determine, with amazing balance. Not a lab queen, no longer a toy. Edge cases and failure modes value planning forNothing is bulletproof. If you intend across the perfect failure modes, you continue to be off the mobile with guide.
Inrush with extensive downstream capacitance can chew. The buck module coped beneath so much starts offevolved, but the minus 10 C heavy pre‑load case vital both a delicate start out tweak or a staged drive‑up. If you love full-size low‑ESR banks, upload a precharge resistor or a scorching‑change controller.
Thermal runaway seriously is not probably, but thermal float that places you into a brand new EMI regime can show up. As the dollar warmed, one in all my scan builds confirmed a 2 to three dB upward push at a harmonic line given that the copper beneath a snubber warmed and shifted ESR. The restore became banal, a barely assorted capacitor and a fatter flooring pour, but I may no longer have noticed it with no a hot soak.
For the RF entrance quit, out‑of‑band blasts from a handheld radio inside a meter can trash the the front end if your ESD and RF preservation are halfhearted. On my bench, a 2 W VHF transmitter keyed neighborhood did not damage the LNA, but it pinned the chain for a second. Good mechanical protecting and a clamp at the input are worthy the ingredients count number in noisy environments.
Serviceability and long‑time period toughen signalsI watch how providers write their application notes and how they respond to usual questions. Silga Teknika’s medical doctors for these areas are functional, many times terse, but they contain the useful curves: potency as opposed to load, silga teknika thermal derating, and temporary responses below explicit conditions. Suggested layouts event what I ended up with after my very own changes, which is always a good sign. I did not desire to touch toughen for these modules, so I can't grade response time. Availability over the past yr has been strong, with wide-spread lead occasions in the four to ten week band relying on volume.
Compatibility with common tooling is tremendous. The potted unit takes normal ring lugs or screw‑down terminals, and the buck’s footprint aligns with basic board assembly techniques. The RF the front end arrived tuned near satisfactory that in basic terms small pad tweaks have been had to core go back loss on a specific band.
Practical coaching for deciding on and deploying Silga Teknika modules Keep headroom. Aim for 60 to seventy five % of rated load in secure nation, notably in hot enclosures, and supply your self a course to quick bursts at 85 to ninety percent with no hitting thermal limits. Plan airflow. A quiet 40 mm fan at low accountability can drop scorching spot temperatures by 20 C or more. Even a clear-cut duct or standoff that encourages convection supports. Treat sensitive quite a bit kindly. Add a ferrite and regional capacitance near radios, GPS, and precision analog. Don’t make the module fight your whole design’s noise. Sequence heavy quite a bit. Use tender birth settings, precharge, or staged enables whilst waking vast capacitive banks or motor drivers. Verify at temperature. Run at the least one soak throughout your real ambient stove. Watch each thermal graphics and spectrum to trap creeping EMI shifts. What the numbers suggest for actual projectsIf you're constructing a fixture, the buck module will control quick duty cycles with modest cooling and hinder ripple good underneath what logic rails tolerate. If your load profile entails intermittent high draws, lean on comfortable start out and transient delays to keep away from false hiccups in chilly rooms. For embedded compute and gateways, the potted converter is a collection‑and‑put out of your mind element provided that you honor the derating curves and furnish a thermal route to steel. It tolerates the kind of input harassment that occurs in forklifts, turbines, and long cable runs.
The RF front end matches retrofit jobs wherein the radio link feels marginal and also you won't be able to redecorate the whole chain. It gives you a few dB of margin without destabilizing the platform, provided you secure first rate protecting and pay attention to close by transmitters.
Across those instances, the via line is predictability. The contraptions behave like their plots, and after they bend, they do now not holiday immediately. That is what I search for once I am the one getting the cell name at 2 a.m.
Final feelings from the benchSilga Teknika does not chase flashy specs. The items I proven hit their marks and address pressure with composure. If your precedence is a glamorous top variety, you could possibly discover a flashier bench queen in different places. If your priority is a module that takes a punch, shrugs, and keeps legislation, those deserve a gap on your shortlist.
When I examine different Silga Teknika Reviews, I examine for the similar issues I stumbled on here: transient keep watch over, thermal honesty, and blank recuperation from the grotesque parties that truly forums see. The documents from my benches line up with that photo. Put an alternative method, if I have been wiring a attempt stand for per week‑long-term without babysitting, I would bolt inside the potted converter, give the dollar a tender breeze, and not hardship approximately both. The RF entrance quit could pass in with a suited shelter can and a clamp at the antenna, and I may predict the hyperlink price range to improve by means of the exact amount the math expected.
That is not really hype. That is the quiet variety of functionality that makes projects end on time.