I have been looking at ways to derive low voltage rails from a higher voltage and current supply, which in practical terms is about 53-0-53V from a linear power supply (toroidal, bridge rectifier and electrolytic caps).
I naively thought that the circuit below should produce a nice 30V across the test load R3, instead I got a dead zener diode and a nice explosion from transistor Q2 which was somewhat unexpected and disappointing. It actually blew its middle leg off, the poor thing.
The idea is to get +15V and -15V rails to power an op amp or two. I expected that R1, D1, and R2 would drop respectively 38V, 30V and 38V and thus, like a pair of standard series regulators, Q1's emitter would stabilise at 15V (relatively to the hypothetical 0V rail which isn't there) and likewise the collector of Q2 would be at -15V.
What have I done wrong? I am wondering if I've misunderstood the current flow through the PNP, they always make my brain fry because of the reverse sort of nature of them. Anyway, what's my mistake?
simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab