I'm trying to make a ~4V 2A regulator with the LM317. It works with minimal load but when I increase the load the voltage drops instantly to 3.4V. I'm not sure what's happening.
I'm trying to build something like this circuit:
I don't have the exact same components so my circuit actually looks like this:
simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab
Another strange thing I've noticed is that when I add the load resistor, the sum of VCE + Vout is less than 24V (around 22V,) but the 24V power supply has it's own voltmeter and it marks 24V all the time, which shouldn't be possible as there's nowhere else between Vin and GND for those 2V to be. I thought it might be my cheap multimeter so I grabbed a better one but that one reads the same voltages.
Here are some photos of my setup:
I'm aware the heatsink for the transistor is smaller than it should be, but this is just testing the circuit and it takes about 30s to heat up to where you can't touch it, the LM317 is always cold so it can't be thermal shutdown right?
I'm also aware that making a 2A voltage regulator on a breadboard is a bad idea, but again I am just trying to see if the circuit works.
From what I've seen of other questions it seems this can happen when you invert the pins, this is the pinout I'm following:
Edit: When i made the circuit on an universal board the regulator worked like it should.