All You Need To Know About Zener Diodes To Fix Stuff! And TVS Diodes... How Zener Diode Works

LER #225 *All you need to know about ZENER DIODES to fix stuff* This is the 5th video in this series looking at common components and circuits, from the perspective of a repair hobbyist / technician.

In each video I hope to teach you all you need to know about the most common way in which components and circuits fail, and how to test and diagnose these faults. I try to keep each video to around 30 mins. Of course I will still be making the regular repair videos this channel is getting well known for.

The ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW Series
*Resistors*

*Capacitors*

*Inductors*

*Diodes*

*Zener Diodes*

*Transistors*

*ATX PSU*

*Amplifiers*

*MOSFETs*

*Thermal Cameras*

*Power Adapters*

I work in collaboration with:
The Electronics Channel (with Carlos and Detlef)

Gran Canaria Uncovered

For All Your PCB needs: free $5 discount coupon

Equipment used in my videos. These are affiliate links, you pay the normal price and I make a small commission.

TEST METERS
Aneng AN8009
KM601
VC480C+
MESR-100 ESR METER
XC6013L CAPACITOR METER
TM-902C TEMPERATURE METER
FNB58 USB ANALYZER
PCI POST ANALYZER
TL460S Plus PCI_E ANALYZER
MULTIMETER PROBE KIT KET05
OSCILLOSCOPES
FNIRSI 1014D
FNIRSI DSO-TC3
FNIRSI DPOX180H
BENCH PSU
NPS3010W
SOLDERING
T12 Station with M8 9501 Handle
SUGON T26D
QUICK 861DW
PROS'KIT SS-331H
THERMAL CAMERA
Infiray P2 Pro
MICROSCOPES
Amscope Optical Microscope (copy)
ANDONSTAR AD407

EEPROM Programming
TL866 II+
CH341A

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Thank you
Richard

[kriswillems]

50mA at 27v is 1.35W and your diode is only 400mW....

[MexicaliDespierto]

You are a great teacher, I'm learning a lot from your channel. Thank you for your videos.

[MrMaxeemum]

Worked with electronics 30+ years and I still love watching your videos. Never believe you know everything, there is always something to learn. I wish I had videos like this when I was learning, so clear and precise instructions / advice. Keep up the good work.

[therealb]

What I love about this video is that it directly goes to the practical applications and shows what common zebra diodes look like.

In electronics/electrical engineering we had to solve 100s of numerical problems on zener diodes & study it's general structure, characteristics, VI graphs, parallel or series combinations etc but not even one student knew what a zener diode looked like in real life.

I think education should have both.

[seeithappen]

Makes me remember the days when I used a zener in building my own powersupply. Refreshing video, thanks for uploading.

[richardpope]

Your method of explaining is excellent.
This video is very informative.

[gordonemery]

Another great video rich, to us novices you explain it far better than most on yt carry on🦆lol

[castlecodersltd]

A good video, thanks for sharing your knowledge

[marcelmauch]

Love your videos, your a great teacher. At the start of the video you mentioned that your not sure why they use a 'k' for cathode. The German word for cathode is Kathode (K) which is probably how that came to be. Keep it up and thanks for all the information 😄

[knightwar]

So that short tracer is useful for testing zener diodes too that's very nice!

[Anon_PK]

Sir,
Bundles of Thanks...
Respect and Regards,
From Pakistan ❤️

[marekwaczynski]

HI. I am just trying to repair old Denon Amplifier which seems to be massively faulty. Right now I found damaged Zener diodes (works like resistor 7ohm-no diode detection). 27V tiny type MTZJ27A and MTZxx . WIth J it is 5mA Zener current without 20 mA as far as I found. Is it important to replace fully identical (5/20 mA)?
It is 27 V diode probably 500 mW tolerance A. Voltage is number one to check but what about Wattage and tolerance. A bit bigger Wattage should be not a problem What about tolerance. A seems to be the worst one. SO each replacement 27 V and close to 500mW should be OK ? Newbie in electronics (oldie by age). Great tutorials Have seen already few. Thanks.

[edwinlooy]

You are a great teacher😊 It's been like ages ago, That i went to school and learned about electronics. Now i am 42 and started to hobby around with vintage stereo equipment. I come across so many obstacles like: reading the parts values inside an amp from like all kinds of different capacitors/diodes/etc. And also trying to figure out what replacement part would be suitable too if the one inside isn't available in the exact same form. Is there a way to contact you, So i can send some pictures and info on what i can read of some parts and get me started on this a bit more? That would be awesome. I also found some zener inside an Akai amp which was like rusted through, I cleaned it and for test sake i soldered it underneath the print (because legs were too short now) so i could go on with testing the project😉😊

[TheHayruss]

Thanks for the informative video. Can you put Zener diodes in parallel or series or a combination of both? Can they be used with differeing values to achieve a desired clamping voltage? I have seen various forms of this in DIY Valve audio circuits but never understood the full aspect of it nor if it was a suitable application of the zeners capability. Thanks again Cheers H

[devonwilson]

Informative article. However, I was expecting a little more respecting how zener diodes are tied together in a series configuration to produce an expected regulated output in cases when you don't have the required single zener.

[unintendedperson]

Can you teach us about high side mosfet with zener diode inside the chip and how it works?

[therealb]

I hope you add these all you need to know series to your learn basic electronics for repair playlist. I've added all your playlists to my library :D

[davidnguyen]

I have a zener diode RD6.2EB2, what happens when it breaks down? The 1 ohm resistor in my circuit kept burning. This is part of a voltage regulator for a reel to reel capstan motor. The circuit has 3 transistors which have been replaced.

[rgodhnia]

Hi sir I watch all your videos its great place to lern, recently I was repairing a printer found blown smd diode there is no marking on it, how do it find correct replacement there no schematic for pcb ??

[مصطفىالربيعي-تغ]

Hi my amazing teacher, I have a question please, I have an electronics card which was already had an SMD Zener Diod "UM" the SMD code, when I put the red prob on A and black on K it was showing OL when I get the upsidedown it was showing 0.47 on zener mode, your input please. And many thank for your channel