clamping limiting a voltage use schottky?

I have an opamp circuit with +/-12V supplies and a desired output range of 0-5V.

It is possible if a user plugs the wrong thing into the input of this circuit for the Opamp to put out up to 7.5V.

If wanted to make sure that the Opamp output never goes beyond 5V would I connect the output of the opamp to current limiting resistor and then to the anode of of a schottky diode and the cathode of the schottky is connected to a 5V reference voltage?
I think this is called clamping.
At the same point I can also connect another shottky to ground so that the voltage never goes below zero as well.

It'll probably be more like -0.2V and +5.2V, but you have the concept right.

That's how it's often done, excepts the 5V rail is used rather than a separate reference.

You might not even need a current resistor because the op-amp's output stage could have current limiting built-in.

What IC are you interfacing with? Have you checked it doesn't have input protection diodes built-in?

Hero999 said:

That's how it's often done, excepts the 5V rail is used rather than a separate reference.

You might not even need a current resistor because the op-amp's output stage could have current limiting built-in.

What IC are you interfacing with? Have you checked it doesn't have input protection diodes built-in?

Click to expand...

On this circuit there are no 5V rails (just +/-12V) so I would need the reference voltage instead.

The output of this circuit will interface to the "Expression Pedal Input" of audio fx processors.
This is a high impedence input that expects 0-5v but I have no idea what kind of over voltage protection will be present there and I want to make sure my device is safe for many different fx processors.

Just stick a 5.1V or 5.6V zener across the output, it's as simple as that.

If you wanted to avoid generating a 5V reference, you could use a 5.1V zener diode to ground. The zener also acts as a normal diode in the reverse direction so it would clamp any negative voltages to about -0.7V, which likely is adequate to protect the fx processor. You might also add a resistor (say 10kΩ) in series with the output to the processor to limit the current.

Edit: Didn't see Hero999's post in front of me.