Sharing Lars’s post from Facebook for those who might not be on there!
“We have made our +/-12V +/-1A EuroRack power supply available as an open hardware design. Gerbers and Diptrace source files are available below. Do absolutely anything you want with it (except please, please don’t design poorly routed derivative PCBs.)
Experienced DIY’ers are welcome to help commit resources or export products to the repository. The switcher module this design uses is a little pricy, but available OTS from Mouser/DigiKey in low quantities, so it is a good design for DIY. For those without lots of hand SMT experience, this would be an advanced level SMT build due to the QFN parts. But it is low parts count on the SMT side.
This may not be identical to what we offer in the future, but it’s a solid EuroRack power supply design and now you own it.”
My first time messing around with diptrace but it looks like the switcher pcb is just an add on to mount/attach the DKA30A-12 to the main board? Passive SMD stuff looks like 0603. The TPS7A voltage regulators look a little tricky to hand solder but maybe not?
Interesting! Looks like the non-basic parts are
TPS7A3301RGWR
TPS7A4700RGWR (not sure what voltage you’re looking for - the specs indicate a range for input and output, and mouser has low stock on these)
MURATA BNX (not sure which one? I may have not exported the BOM with all the info)
I have a few spare LZX Capsule power boards built by me for $150/ea + shipping. All tested and visually compared against a Malekko Power V1.3 with Shapechanger’s Stencil output and all looks good to me. I’m based in Portland, OR. DM if you’re interested.
Nope, haven’t investigated getting an oven yet. For these I used a hot air gun + PCB preheater + low temp ChipQuik + flux. This is the rework station I used on this run:
You could probably get away with using a regular hot air tool without the preheater–just spend a bit more time on the soaking stage with the hot air tool.
I potentially have two more boards I could put together and do a short video on it. Once you get used to the rough reflow timing and how the chips look once they’ve dropped, it’s pretty easy. Soldering the through hole headers probably took me the most time.
thank you for sharing the unit I’ve been meaning to ask you . I have been looking for a ”recommended” preheat plate lazily for a bit now. I feel like there are so Many rebranded and/or wtf options out there including ali or eBay it feels like a dice roll to get one.
This is certainly in my price window.
How do you like it for your work?
I think deep down somewhere I’m just waiting & looking for an excuse to get a whizoo. But So far have been fairing fine with a hot air iron and a needle tip iron. Definitely am itching to get into that world of oven baked goodness. I always seem to eat the face off of at least one or five leds with the hot air tool, the plastic is so particular.
Yeah, there are a ton of options out there for hot air rework stations / ovens and by no means am I claiming this is the best unit for a given budget. Circuitspecialists happened to have a sale on when I picked it up which helped. I have no huge complaints about the build quality since you could pay significantly more for a similar feature set, it seems.
I’d like to get an oven when I can afford it as this board and pretty much any SMT board you have a stencil / paste for would go much quicker. Then the temptation would be to find a cheap pick n’ place.
Not sure if you meant SMT LEDs or through hole but in the latter case, try some kapton tape–it is amazing how much heat shielding it can provide. If it’s SMT LEDs and they’re getting chewed up during reflow, you probably need more flux and a lower temperature. You can always cheat a little bit with ChipQuik low temp solder if you’re just not getting on with a particular part. Preheating the whole board before the ramp up stage with your hot air tool helps so much, especially if you are fighting against a continuous ground plane in a multilayer board.
I’m a bit confused by the LZX Capsule’s power input, will it except a DC12V from a power brick or is the LZX 4hp DC Distro suggested required when multiple Capsules are used in the same case?
