Inside a Fake Mean Well DIN-rail PSU
These days, you can get fakes, bootlegs, and similar for just about anything. While a fake handbag isn’t such a big deal, in the case of a DIN-rail power supply, you’d better make sure that you got the real deal. Case in point, the fake ‘Mean Well’ DIN-rail PSU that [Big Clive] got his mitts on for a detailed analysis and teardown.
Even without taking a PSU apart there are often clear clues that you might be dealing with a fake, starting with the logo and the rest of the markings. Here it’s clear that the logo is designed to only appear to be the MW one at a quick glance, with the rest of the label being poorly copied English gibberish containing copious “unnecessary” double “quotes”.
So what do you get for £3-5 in this +12VDC, 1.25A rated PSU? Shockingly, the insides are actually quite decent and probably close to the genuine MW, with basic noise filtering, proper isolation, and apparently a real class-Y safety capacitor. Similarly, the chosen DK124 control IC is more than capable of the task, with a good circuit for the adjustable voltage control.
This is possibly one of those cases where an off-the-shelf industrial design was stuffed into a case that tries to hitch a ride on the brand recognition of Mean Well rather than some national brand name. It’ll be interesting to see how close this circuitry is to the genuine MW PSU. We’ll find out once [Clive] gets the real deal in for a teardown. Perhaps it’s actually a solid clone of an older MW unit?
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