New Driver: PD68 "DoubleDown" - 17/20/22mm FET+4

Since there’s nothing in the way you could make the spring pad a bit smaller but connect it to a copper pour under the led+ pad with vias there to make up for anything lost under the mcu. This would allow you to move the bottom side 7135’s inward and give more room for ground tabs to clear a retainer ring.

I really want a 7.5mm spring pad so I don’t have to use those teeny Qlite springs. I actually wanted 8mm, but that wasn’t feasible.

I think it’s done, but I can’t figure out how to crop the workspace size… its a big mostly empty square on oshpark

Yea, you want a thick wide connection to the fet ground pins to keep resistance low.

I’ve fixed almost everything you guys have pointed out, thanks. Now I’m having the issue where oshpark renders a big empty square with the driver down in the corner. What’s the fix for that? other than that, the driver is done.

edit: like this

Check if you have any parts, traces or silkscreen somewhere outside your board, Oshpark automatically crops to the smallest square that fits everything.

~ edit ~
Can’t see your picture.

Less likely imo but it could also be a problem with you cam job. Oshpark provides a cam job here.

I don’t see anything that should be a problem from your screenshot.

Thanks for the help guys, I’ve changed most of what you suggested and cleaned stuff up a bit.

OP updated

If you can’t find anything that could be causing the problem then I could take a look at your .brd file. You can add the .brd to the zip file that contains your gerbers, upload to oshpark then share. Oshpark just ignores extra files in a zip, it only uses the gerbers when a zip file is presented.

~ edit ~

Opps. :open_mouth: Looks like you fixed it.

Yep, it was the dumb limit box eagle makes. I thought I had deleted it, but apparently I only deleted one layer of it. All is well now

Looks nice. Thanks for the effort and for sharing, pd68, you continue to amaze with nice innovations.

To me the 7135 pads on the bottom look pretty close to the spring pad, but I’m far from beeing an expert, and I understand why you wanted the spring pad as big as it is.

I’m no expert either, but after getting some sleep, I have found a few little things I will change. A revised board will come later today.

Acute angles like the one at the gnd ring of the OTC can cause acid traps and result in poor rendition of the board or at least so I’ve been told. Acute angles become places where the copper might get over etched resulting in a broken trace. Try thinking in terms of removing a minimum of copper to create the traces and separations and you will be headed in the tight direction.

Guys I really do appreciate all the comments and tips. Keep ’em coming!

I think I got rid of all of the acute angles now. I also:

- added more ground via’s

- moved the bleeder resistor (for lighted tailcap) to the top

- increased the copper pour size for the FET ground connection

- retooled the spring pad area and silk screen.

  • widened all led- traces to 1mm

nice improvements, pd! You think one could drill through the board and run a wire from withinside the spring to led+ on the mcpcb? Would it even make sense to run that wire directly from the top of the spring to the mcpcb? I think I would try do that and solder the MCU on afterwards

How’s this Chouster? 2.05mm 2.1mm hole through the (almost) middle.

My 20awg silicone wire measures at 1.9mm thick.

Edit: Made some very minor changes to the hole spacing, updated pics and links accordingly

I don’t know what the experts would say and I really would like to know, hope there’s some feedback from other guys. To me, that looks nice. I think this also would come in handy when doing piggybacked driver setups.

The driver needs it’s own batt+ connection, so for when you’re piggybacking drivers you’ll still need to connect a wire or something to the springpad.

I don’t like when the hole is the only led+ connection or when it interferes with soldering the spring to the driver, but it seems like it would be ok how i have it.

I agree, I was expecting more feedback, but then again it’s only been 4 hours since I posted Rev2

Do you have Mattaus cam generator job? Also use I believe it’s called outline in eagle as the cutoff ring for dimensions…I see you are up to rev 2.1 at OSHPark… great job by the way, loving thes dual output builds!

I tried Mattaus’ cam, but it wasn’t working with Eagle 7.2. The support people at oshpark sent me a cam job that has been working great.

Question: when I do “hole” instead of “via” the insides won’t be plated, right?

I think most people would prefer the look of the version without the hole, so please don’t keep it like this just for me. I like to have holes in these boards, because I think it’s easier to solder and makes a stronger connection when wires are through-hole soldered. I thought having a hole inside of the spring would make bypassing these easier, but I also like the way led4power had the led+ connection on his ld-1 driver, where the hole comes out outside of the spring.

Just to be clear, it isn’t really going to work for through-hole soldering. There isn’t any electrical connection on the top of the hole. It is just a pass through for insulated wire to go straight from the tip of the spring up to the mcpcb. Some people like that because you get less resistance from the traces in the driver.

I’ll keep both versions available.