Discussion Reply!!! About 50 Words

When looking at the four Op-amps listed, they all have useful functions when it comes to circuit design. After doing some research the one that interested me the most were Summing Amplifiers. A summing amplifier setup is exactly as it sounds. It takes multiple voltage inputs and combines them to create one voltage output. It can also act as a subtractor if the output voltage is the difference between all the input voltages. Since these amplifiers can do both, it gives them the ability to be both Inverting and non-inverting based off the configuration of the circuit, however most of the applications use the non-inverting setup. Here is an example of both setups.

For the non-inverting setup above, you can find the gain using the formula: Av=1+(RA/RB)

For the Inverting setup above, you can find the gain using the formula Vout/Vin=-Rf/Rin

Some of the advantages to using this configuration is that you could apply a DC voltage offset by using an AC signal voltage. This makes the amplifier ideal use for digital to analog conversion applications which is one of its primary usages. A great example of this is having multiple digital inputs such at 0V representing a 0 in binary and having 5V representing a 1 in binary. It will take the multiple inputs and convert them to one output which can be analog. Another usage is for audio mixing. It’s able to add different signals but keep the gains equal. Since it can do both inverting and non-inverting this is what makes it a popular choice for these applications.