Hello new printed circuit boards from jlc pcb, let's see what they are, it's so exciting, and this is another of my power distribution printed circuit boards, and this is an xt60 distribution board with six positions for xt60s and they're, just simply put in parallel. Let's open the bag right now i used the footprint from jlc pcb's footprint library. For this one um. I did feel that these holes were actually quite large.

I think i'd have gone for something a bit smaller, but let's get some xt60s and see how they fit right. Let's try some of these uh. Oh now, those are females, i suppose, but those are the ones you tend to get on lipos. So that's the one you use for source current and then pins.

You tend to use where pins there for the receptacle the thing receiving the current okay, let's see how they fit. That's the pointy end, which is negative on xt60s um yeah. That is quite quite loose. I think i'd have gone for a smaller hole than that i mean i could have done this pcb, where i just simply placed pads and then assigned them to the two nets, because the bottom layer net the ground plane is, i don't know, zero volts.

The top uh ground plane net - i called plus 12 volts, i think, but uh yes, but i mean these will work and i'm sure i can solder those in but uh yeah. They are a little bit loose. So, okay, let me get my soldering iron and put some of these in actually i'll get the wires that i've made up or i've made two. I think i need to make another couple and just show how this is going to work.

So, a while ago i bought a set of ten of these. These are pcie splitters, so it takes a six pin pcie and into each one of those pins. There are two wires and that takes it out to two six pin pcies with the option of um an additional two pins which are just zero volt lines. Four graphics cards these, but they also work on my ant miners.

So what i've done is i've started to make up some of these, which are xt60 to dual pcie. Essentially, these are six pin um, because i don't use the additional two grounds so, given that these are males most of the connectors on this board, i want will be females, but then what i'm probably going to do is put one male on the rear side, like Ooh that no, it won't be it'll, be like that get my pauses and neggies the right way around now. I really should solder that one in first and then solder, these uh females as i go outwards. Yes i'll, probably do that.

Okay! So, let's start by soldering that one in right, that's soldered that and i've managed to get solder to flow around this side, it's more difficult getting in between the two pins where's my focal point there. It is um, so i've kind of left that. But i think it's flowed into that gap. So that's the mail on that's the incoming and now i need to get some females on.

Where is my focal point? It seems to be up here. I don't know why. There's nothing up here, uh, so i'll start putting some of those females on and that's it with three output connectors one input connector. Now, certainly, this board isn't going to be handling 60 amps, but it might be handling about 25 and of course, all that current is going to go through the input, connector and then proportions of that will come out of those output connectors, and i can put two More on here, as and when i need to, but i've got these two wires already made up, so i think what i'll do is plug these onto this board and actually take it out to the shed and try it on the scam system.

So here is the scam system in the shed uh. Scam is an acronym, of course. It's not it's nothing to do with scams. It's the solar, crypto accumulation machine.

So got the big battery pack. Here, it's uh, eight cell lithium ion phosphate so nominally. Oh, what is it 25.6 volts, something like that? Solar comes in here through three car headlight bulbs in parallel into this distribution board, which was my xt 90 distribution board. Now that was done slightly differently.

I put ring terminals on the xt90 connectors and had them coming in from the side. That, of course, goes to the battery. There's a bms there's a fuse here, but it also goes to this device, which is a voltage, monitor device. So currently you can see the battery pack is at 26.6 volts and when that gets to 28 volts constantly charged by solar - and there is some today - it's not wonderful.

Oh i'll have to just pick that up um, but there's one and a half amps going into the battery pack, so yeah it is being charged. So this gets up to 28 volts. The relay turns on that goes into that xt90 into the buck converter, which takes the batteries 28 volts, as it will be when that relay turns on down to 12 volts, and then that goes into that xt90 and then it's a bit of a mess. You've got this funny connector board um coming off to four of these pcie connectors, and it's that that i intend to replace with my new pcb.

So this is where i need to disconnect this. So that's the xt60! That's going to go into my new board um! This is a circuit board which has a connector that goes into the hewlett packard power supplies and then i've soldered in these pcie connectors. So i'm going to disconnect all of those from the ant miner and then try and put my new board in place. So i'll start by plugging these four pcies into the four boards now three of them are hashing boards and the fourth one is a controllable, but they all take 12 volts.

So let's do that and so that's the controller board plug that in and the three hashing boards. I think that has to go that way around and then another one here and another one. This way round these um little double earthing additional connectors are a little bit of a nuisance, but not too bad, and then that kind of will hover over the top there and then i plug in this plug into there. Oh, let's just make sure i've got my pauses and neggies the right way around.

That does look right. Doesn't it pause at the top there neg at the bottom, and these pauses are at the top, so i think that's right and then that can just sit on there. I might need to just have something to hold that up, but otherwise i think that looks pretty good and then i can switch on this ant miner and see if the board hangs together with 25 or so amps going through it. So i just cut this piece of foam rubber from some pipe insulation and i'll just put that under the board, so that it's uh not likely to i'm not sure whether all this stuff is earthed or at least uh referenced to the zero volts on these incoming Connectors, but just in case it is, i don't want that dropping down onto the metal work right now.

I believe that you can override this voltage controlled switch by just pressing the button. So let's do that on that hasn't turned on. Why is that yeah? I think this on off thing is just the functionality being on or off. I think, to switch this on.

I'm gon na have to actually lower the trigger threshold to below this 26.7. So, let's press and hold that so the upper threshold, i'll bring down to 26.5 and then press and hold and on it goes relay, is on red. Light is on this board is powered up now. This ant miner at the moment, is only running the fan, so i'll wait until it's booted up and then it will run the hashing boards as well and that's when it will draw the full well, it's about 270 watts, but at 300 watts.

12 volts. That's about 25 amps, so that's it finished with its boot up phase. Oh, my um lights are on i'll, disconnect that we don't need the flashing leds on um. Yes, that all seems to be working.

What i really need is an ammeter to see how much current is going through these wires and with that current, going through the board just want to uh make sure everything's cold. I can feel a tiny bit of warmth yeah. Maybe that is a few degrees up from sort of the baseline temperature in here, which i suppose you'd expect at 25 amps, but it seems to be holding its own just fine right. So this is dc 40 amps, i think or dc.

If i use the clamp connector so let's put that over one of these wires doesn't really matter which one and yeah 20 amps going through there yeah that's about right, because i think this is taking about 270 watts, 12 volts, so anyway, 20 amps is what this Thing records: let's take the other connector away yeah. This is there is some warmth in this: it's not what i'd call alarmingly hot, but it is mildly, warm to the touch. But then i suppose you'd expect that on a one ounce, copper pc b with 20 amps going through it, but it seems to be hanging in there perfectly well now. The reason i made this pcb with its five possible outputs and one input, is because, although this ant miner only requires four of these pcie uh connectors three for the hashing boards and one for the controller board, the machine i actually want to use is this one And this has double connectors for each of these four hashing boards.

So that's eight connectors there, plus a ninth one for the controller board, so with five output connectors on this pcb and these split cables. That will give me up to 10 connectors, which i can plug into the bigger machines uh down here. This is the l3 plus because i'm hoping that this will produce more cryptocurrency for the same amount of electricity and therefore i want to substitute the machine on the bench for this one down here and see. If that's the case so now, i need to put two more of these female connectors on the board and then make up three more of these uh xt60 to dual pcie connecting cables.

So i shall go and do that so there's my board, fully populated with xt60 females, five of them on this side and the xt60 male here and i've just remade the solder connections uh for the male, because that's the one that takes the full current. So i've made sure that the solder has run right round the uh through plated hole on both the paws and the neg these ones - it's not quite so important because each are taking a smaller proportion of the current. So there are little gaps around inside here, but i'm not too concerned about that um. Now i want to make up more of these, which are xd60 males to these split pcies.

So that's going to take a while um i'll, probably come back for another video on those. This was the main focus of this video and yes, it can handle 20 amps with possibly a small temperature rise, but yeah. That seems pretty good. I'm quite happy with that.

So cheerio.