s-shaped power distro board.

[reve]

Hi gang!

So as I progress on the DIY modular, I find myself in need of a power distribution board. Since I want a stack of MOTM and .com jacks, I'm not real happy with any of the commerical offerings (except for the STG one, but he never emailed me back.) So I figure "okay, for the most part it's a bunch of copper traces. How hard could a distro board be to etch?"

Well, the only way I could figure how to do a single sided distro board (with one termination point) is in an S-shape, as illustrated below. I read through the threads from a couple years ago about how thick the traces need to be and all that, but what I'm not clear on is how far the traces can go. I know star is ideal when wiring this stuff, and it seems like all the commercial boards pull little tricks to minimize those runs. But as I can tell, that's not really an option with a single-sided solution.

I also saw people mentioning the "protection circuitry" in past posts. Which I see as diodes and/or caps in the commercial boards. But I'm not sure on what, if anything, I should really add.

So really this boils down to a "would this work?" post. Like, if I plugged the power source (in this case a 3A power-one supply) into the red highlighted MTA jack on the board illustrated below, would I be good to go? Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks everyone!

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[Sound]

In order to avoid ground loops is needed that the ground would be enough sized for drain correctly the circuit ground to the power supply ground.

So if resistance of a conductor is related to its section and its length, I would say that the s configuration is not appropriate.

I think it will be better to make like a tree and feed the three branches from the same point.
Also make the maximum possible width for the ground traces.

[Sound]

[Luka]

i just made some distro boards

i tried to limit the amount of connection points on each distro as to try keep star wiring idea somewhat happening. big traces for rails and huge ground



easy to etch

[reve]

[Sound]

I think not. And to use a double sided PCB for this is not worth in my opinion.

Draw three traces -Positive, Ground and Negative- perpendicular the three buses. Now, for example, draw the ground trace to the ground buses without jumpers, and now you could connect the positive of one bus and the negative of other bus without jumper and you will need two jumpers for the positive trace and two jumpers for the negative trace to the buses.

The size of the jumper... I think that any cut leg of a already soldered component -resistor, etc...- will be OK.

Other possibility is the option that posted Luka and wire three of them with different cables directly to the power supply.

Other possibility is make that bus twice long and wire it in its centre so you will have two buses wired with same cable.

Other possibility is solder a cable to all the length of the ground trace in order to increase the section.

I think that the ground cable from the bus to the power supply should be more than 0.5mm2. (at least with this size I avoided a "hum" that I had in my system). why not 0.75mm2?

And about protection or regulation, I added two 33uf electrolytic capacitors (positive to ground and negative to ground) I dont know argue this but I thought it has sense.
If anyone could talk about this could be interesting.

[emdot_ambient]

Or you could just get several of these: http://www.cgs.synth.net/

[Dave Kendall]

The girl's very nice indeed, but I think emdot meant these....

http://www.cgs.synth.net/modules/cgs74_bus.html



cheers,
Dave

[emdot_ambient]