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Eurorack Power Distribution PCB

For the Eurorack cabinet I built, I needed a way to distribute power to all the modules. My old had Behringer power supplies with 'flying bus' cables (flat cables with female connectors). In the cabinet I wanted something more robust/fixed to the cabinet so I designed my own PCB. It has very little actual circuitry on it, it's mostly just traces and connectors with a few caps here and there. No rigorous design went into this, I just looked about on the web for similar solutions and them made my choices based on components I had.

As shown, I've got both 10 and 16 pin female connectors, that's not very common on the ones you find on the web, but hardly any modules use the 5V and CV/Gate lines on the 16 pin connector so I figured I'd get rid of a bunch of those and save myself some soldering.

One thing I did add to this which I think is a nice touch are dimensions right on the silkscreen layer. This way I don't have to guess or dig up the design files if I want to throw one of these in another case some day.
The design allows the PCBs to be daisy chained together so less wiring is needed.

Assembly Order

  1. Resistors
  2. LEDs
  3. 2x5 and 2x8 sockets, only 1 or 2 pins on CV/Gate lines (which have lower heat sink capacity)
  4. Caps on +/- 12 Rails (skip the ground pin)
  5. Finish soldering all pins with extra hot air preheating the board. This was absolutely necessary on the 2oz copper because the heat sinking capacity of this PCB is huge.

The v1 schematic didn't have a value for the LED's resistors. 1kΩ works just fine.

As usual this design is available here if you would like to have some fabricated for your use. I specified 2oz copper instead of the usual 1oz on most PCBs and that cost a bit more (probably wasn't necessary either). Because of the size they aren't super inexpensive they were a bit over $5 each, still way less than buying them premade.

I assembled another one to have at my workbench and printed a few brackets to hold it in place.


Design files: https://github.com/EchelonForce/eurorack_power_strip

Schematic

Creative Commons License

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