The problem in your specific case is that you are attempting to turn on your
FET at 80kHz I think you said with different size gate resistors.  80kHz is
relatively fast and you may not be charging the gate capacitance fast enough
to "fully" turn
on the FET with the PIC output.  Therefore, the FET is operating in its
linear region which means it isn't "fully" on and the Drain-Source
Resistance is still quite high which is why your FET is heating up.
PowerDiss = Rds * Ids.

You'll need to add another driving circuit for your FET.

D



> So what happens when you slowly drive the gate..does the conductance
> increase with the gate voltage such that you reach the final
> on mode? In
> other words, a soft start circuit.  If I wanted to minimize
> the spikes on
> the output (such as capacitors charging) then is this the
> proper method?
>
>
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