Voltage regulator calculation

Before you can design an adjustable voltage regulator into your circuit, or do a redesign, you need to calculate the values for two resistors. This is not difficult in itself, but actually finding the right resistors may pose problems. Fortunately a trick is available to make it all much easier.With most adjustable voltage regulators like the LM317 and LM337, the input voltage has to be 1.2 to 1.25 volts above the desired output voltage. This is because the voltage at the ADJ (adjust) input is internally compared to a reference voltage with that value.