Easy power and ground rails

Other Hardware General Electronics
1

Hello!

Every project I've assembled in the past 7 years has had multiple components all needing power and ground.

With larger electrical projects, you use a bus bar. I can't find anything readily available for purchase that does this so I made one in Eagle but PCB printing through JLPCB has a month long processing and ship time, and many local manufacturers I found in California charge a LOT.

Here's an image of what I made in Eagle to give you an idea of what I'm talking about:

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You could attach VCC and GND from your source, regardless of what that might be, and every component (MCU included) that needs juice could be soldered to one of the pads.

How do you guys do this?

2

How to post images so we don't have to download them and everyone can see them.
How to post an image.
Another page on posting images.

I use proto boards.

3

groundFungus:
How to post images so we don't have to download them and everyone can see them.
How to post an image.
Another page on posting images.

My apologies, working on it now.

Thank you!

Oh yes, I've got a pack of those from Amazon I've been working with for a while, but cutting them down cleanly to size and linking all of the pads, it's just not as finished-feeling as I like. Obviously a complete PCB is 'finished' but I have major design restrictions preventing me from going that far.

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4

Lots of ideas here, you will have to scan the thread to find them.

https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=445951.0

Some ideas:

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2.jpg
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Copper foil tape:

Kapton tape:

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5

larryd:
Lots of ideas here, you will have to scan the thread to find them.

This is perfect! Thank you.

I'm going to place the order with JLPCB and slap a scribe onto my Ender 3 and attempt etching while I wait.

Copper tape also solves this very simply and pragmatically.

6

Why not cut a rectangular piece of copper clad material then use a cutoff wheel to cut a shallow trench down the middle.

Epoxy this board onto a protoboard.

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7

I’ve just used veroboard plus a few PCB headers soldered in for experimenting .

8

Veroboard, tradename for "stripboard".

run the stripped end of the wire through the holes for mechanical support.