High current on circuit board

Thread Starter

meckert1960

Joined Jul 13, 2005
2
Has anyone put 30Amps on a circuit board?
I'm working on a controller board and looking to see the best way to make this work. Would duplicate plane shapes on top and bottom suffice?
 

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
The cross section of the foil would need to be about the same as that of #12 building wire. I just cheat and solder on some .250 solder wick or coax braid onto the foil for the current. Looks nasty for a professional pcb, tho...
 

SgtWookie

Joined Jul 17, 2007
22,230
30 Amps at what voltage? If it's low voltage (like 3.3 and 5v) you may benefit from dissecting an ATX form-factor PC power supply to see how they did it. Higher voltages, you'll be dealing with lots more power.

Beenthere's idea of using solder-wick works. So does using really wide traces with 2oz or heavier copper on the boards. You can also solder on strips of flat copper stock, but the solder layer should be as thin as possible. For your power connections, use multiple small pins rather than few large pins.

Remember that standard 63/37 tin/lead solder has about 5x the resistance that copper does. Resistance = heat. If you dissect the PC power supply, you'll see what I mean about spreading connections around.
 

John Luciani

Joined Apr 3, 2007
475
Has anyone put 30Amps on a circuit board?
I'm working on a controller board and looking to see the best way to make this work. Would duplicate plane shapes on top and bottom suffice?
One easy way is to use bus wire jumpers in parallel with or instead of a PCB trace.

(* jcl *)
 
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