Making a power distribution PCB?

Thread Starter

CoffeeMan

Joined Jun 24, 2012
1
I'm working on a semi-large scale LED project (512 RGB LEDs).

My Project:
The conceptual design of my project is this: I have an LED breakout board that I designed. Each board has 3 shift registers and controls 8 RGB LEDs (24 LEDs). The plan is that multiple boards would be daisy chained via their com signals (data/clock/latch) and each board would have it's own header for +/- that would connect directly to a centralized distribution board.

I'm in the process of modifying a computer power supply to power my project and have a few questions.

All of the tutorials and instructables I have read all describe a process of grouping the wires by color, then connecting them to binding posts mounted on the chassis. All of the binding posts I have seen are rated max 15A and I am hoping to be using the full 35A for my project (or would at least like the option to in the future). Also, there isn't really enough space in the chassis to add fuses to the power supply. And because I need to be able to split the +5V into many different branches, a single binding post does me no good. So I was thinking, why not just save the wires and skip the whole chassis drilling and binding post method? Instead, I'll group the wires by color and put a connector or connectors on them. Then I can plug that into a PCB I will design. The PCB will have all my "out" headers and the whole thing will be connected by a large copper plane.



The idea being that the 1 large copper plane that connects the headers in from the power supply to the headers out to the LED breakout boards (there will be 64).

Just had an idea that I could use both top and bottom planes and connect them both with lots of vias spaced around the board.

There will be a separate board for ground and a separate board for positive. This way, there won't be interference from having both + and - on the same board.

I'm also thinking for safety precautions to enclose the PCB in plastic cases, and use sheathed headers.

Is this possible?
 
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