Fun / Projects / with my 1997 America Dream
Borrowed a trailer and getting ready for some fun in the sun (it's cold here now 30's again tonight) I went and bought a 8 inch drop hitch, the 6 inch had the deck at too much of an angle, and ...
Forum Discussion
GlennLever wrote:
I believe this symbol is for a diode, but have forgotten how to read it, I believe the current flows in the direction of the arrow inside the symbol??? Help??? That does not make sense as as there are arrows pointing in both directions.
That is the symbol for a diode, though in this case they placed it inside a sort of rough representation of the physical package its in. The actual diode symbol is the black triangle with the line at its apex in the middle of the bigger symbol. Current flows when the triangle end (the anode) is more positive than the line end (the cathode) and does not flow the other way around. (Technically, the anode must be more positive than the cathode by whatever the forward voltage of the diode is, which depends on its exact design and materials. Somewhere in the vicinity of half a volt is typical.)
In this circuit, the diode is almost certainly being used as a snubber for the solenoid's coil, to keep the voltage and current spikes that it produces when it is switched off from propagating back to the switches in the sensors and other connected circuitry. You can pretty much ignore it in analyzing the circuitry. Note that it is oriented such that it only conducts when the red wire is negative with respect to chassis ground, so it's reverse biased (not conducting) in the normal steady-state modes of operation, assuming these are typical 12V circuits.
