Regarding using the el'cheapo voltage reference: What startup and shutdown conditions would that cause ? Would it cause any overshoot at startup and shut down ? I can see how it would work well when everything is in it's stable state but I'm unsure about other states - I also want to be able to use this on laser diodes which are very delicate.
Is there any reason that I'm missing why I couldn't use 10K resistors instead of the 100K resistors ? I have lots of 10K's ...
Thanks to all of your help, I now have my final circuit. I'll order the parts soon and build it on stripboard.
I may switch the 82K resistor with a 22-turn 100K potentiometer in order to get the maximum out of this. (With the 82K it will be limited to about 1.35A.)
I'm building something similar to this only using 3x 1084's in parallel. In the last example attachment I see the 1.25v reference. Is this connected to a 1.25v reference IC not in the schematic, or is it just a labeling of one net and they are to be connected together?
It's just a label and they are all connected together.
The generation of the 1.25V reference voltage relies on the fact that the LM317 will always try and keep the difference between its output and its reference input as 1.25V.