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Mangling Disaster

A project log for Multilayer Recharging 18650 Tower

A scalable multilayer charging station for 18650, and possibly even other battery types.

cyplesmacyplesma 03/09/2019 at 19:500 Comments

So my attempt to mangle an old CPU power supply did not go well. not sure what I messed up or maybe the old power supply was bad to begin with. Any I spent the past week trying my hand at setting up (drawing up in both Express PCB and EasyEDA) an adapter board to simply connect the 20/24 pin CPU power supply cable to a board and setup some fused 5VDC connections. 5 volts is all I'll need for this project.

I started with Express PCB  liked what I had and even setup another adapter board to be able to use the other voltages on the 20/24 pin connector as well. 

The problem I ran into was finding on either Express PCB or EasyEDA was a ready made 20 pin PCB layout. The pins are not standard and during this time I come across someone else's adapter board for electronic bench power supply that is also fused and has a switch mounted on the board. 

Really long story short the board I made in Express PCB which I was able to print I was able to see my layout for the power supply connector was no where near right. and I had a lot of difficulty getting to be right. I bought the power supply connectors from Spark fun and I had made the board before they showed up. Needless to say I now have 5 boards ordered through EasyEDA and I hoping I designed the power connector correctly cause as I stated neither of these programs had ready made versions. I have added a screen shot of each board from both programs to the gallery.  EasyEDa was by far the better price just under 40.00 USD for 5 boards where ExpressPCB would have wanted around 150.00 USD for 3 boards. I did select 2 oz copper since it is for power and I expect a few amps to be flowing through this board.

I wasn't able to print in EasyEDA or at least I haven't figured it out how to yet. That would be nice to have/know to check the pin footprints on nonstandard pinouts. When I get the boards in a week or 2 and they are good I will share the gerber file for the EasyEDA version. I will wait to see how I did till then to create the power supply based on this same concept for my XYZ platform project that will need 5VDC and 12VDC.

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