February 27, 2020

Building a Power Distribution Box

Karan and Keith solder the connectors.
The Rusk County ARC built power distribution boxes during their February club meeting. The boxes, based on a design from AE5CZ and a similar build by KK6OYV, accept a single input and provide three outputs for radios, tuners or other devices.

The club used an online 3D Printing service (CloudCraft) to produce the cases and sources the Anderson Powerpole connectors from Powerwerx. Several of the members who built the boxes are relatively new hams who also benefited from the soldering practice.

The soldering job, in fact, was a little more difficult than expected as the connectors needed to be carefully aligned in order to fit inside the final case. Also, most builders added two small copper wires as "bus bars" across the bottom of the connectors to strengthen the solder joints.

The kits came in right around $15 each and we still have two extra kits still available is anyone would like one.

Adding a bus bar proved very tedious, but effective.

Danny's is ready to go into the case.

It's finished! (With some added decoration)