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Finish line at the routing route

A project log for Universal Supercap Charger

Supercapacitor charging circuit using (mainly) discrete transistors

dylanDylan 10/29/2018 at 01:060 Comments



That of course took longer than I would have hoped, but hey no DRC errors and I didn't even fudge the rules this time.

I made sure to add in a ton of vias. Honestly I'm a little worried to check just how many, but hey I have no idea what thermals I need and more can't hurt...

The ground plane has a ton of stitching vias at 2.54mm pitch if I'm not mistaken, though it doesn't really change much. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of vias connecting the top and bottom ground planes together. Given this thing can take a decent amount of current, I'm not too keen on making anything higher impedance if I can avoid it. It's probably overkill, but so is this project. I could have just bought an IC off the shelf for caps, but no. I want my programmable current limit (resistor based as of now) and awkwardly placed test point silk-screen labels damn it.

That being said, those vias better be tented or so help me. No literally, I'm going to need a lot of help getting those parts to where they need to be as I won't be able to read the damn legend.

As a warning to those with trypophobia, you don't want to read on. This is your last chance!

Good? Cause holy vias batman! (Yes intentional pun with the holes. Perfect time to use that line)

If you didn't believe me when I said overkill, then you'll probably think so now. But with a combined thermal impedance of 0.6C/W and having no damn clue what kind of dissipation power I'll get, then it makes sense. Cause those transistors are either running at 760C, or just above room temp. Time to roll the dice and see if she does the thing or blow up in my face.

To the batcave! (Or just a PCB house. Batman probably has all the equipment, no? I'm pretty sure any NDA he would sign wouldn't stop people from blowing his cover. It just makes sense)

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