Power injection best method. And Fuses

cdjazman

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scamper said:
cdjazman said:
Thanks all.

Scamper. So I have the power injection cable for the mega tree already made when I purchased it. It runs series.

Does logic come into play and I could run the negative from the series cable to a fuse and positive to power supply. Would that work?

It is a better idea to fuse the positive side just in case of a short to earth, having said that, a fuse in line whether positive or return is still going to be better than none.

Ahh yeah whoops wrong way round.

So does this make sense? get one fuse board for series power injection?
 

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Fing

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Hi,
When thinking fuses, draw your circuit and then imagine what would happen if a fault developed. Where the fault is also important, but a bit of logical thinking can narrow this down. For example if one of your trees in the parallel example shorted, then the fuse blowing would take the other 4 trees out as well. perhaps individual fuses would be better in this example?
My megatree is split into 6 separate sections, each individually fused so a fault can only take out one part.
By using individual fuses they can be smaller rated which may help to limit the fault current and potential damage.


Cheers
Fing
 

cdjazman

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djgra79 said:
Here's a pic of one of mine in use. All the blue neg wires go direct from PSU to pigtail. Only the red Pos wire has the hex fuse in line.

Hey Graham,

So in this example you have 3 pos from psu to hex fuse then how many are power injection gong out?

I have 8 points of power injection in my mega tree - two lots of series - wondering if two hex will cover converting them to 8 direct injection cables.

Craig.
 

djgra79

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cdjazman said:
djgra79 said:
Here's a pic of one of mine in use. All the blue neg wires go direct from PSU to pigtail. Only the red Pos wire has the hex fuse in line.

Hey Graham,

So in this example you have 3 pos from psu to hex fuse then how many are power injection gong out?

I have 8 points of power injection in my mega tree - two lots of series - wondering if two hex will cover converting them to 8 direct injection cables.

Craig.
Sorry Craig, forgot to respond the other day.
In this example I have 6 power leads coming out of this box, 4 from the left cable gland and 2 extra to the right. This was my 5v box that powered a BBB for a 4x1 P10 matrix, powered a P2 and then 4 PI points for 5v pixel nodes from memory.
 

cdjazman

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Joined
Apr 24, 2012
Messages
424
djgra79 said:
cdjazman said:
djgra79 said:
Here's a pic of one of mine in use. All the blue neg wires go direct from PSU to pigtail. Only the red Pos wire has the hex fuse in line.

Hey Graham,

So in this example you have 3 pos from psu to hex fuse then how many are power injection gong out?

I have 8 points of power injection in my mega tree - two lots of series - wondering if two hex will cover converting them to 8 direct injection cables.

Craig.
Sorry Craig, forgot to respond the other day.
In this example I have 6 power leads coming out of this box, 4 from the left cable gland and 2 extra to the right. This was my 5v box that powered a BBB for a 4x1 P10 matrix, powered a P2 and then 4 PI points for 5v pixel nodes from memory.
Thanks. Think I have my head around it now. [emoji1]

Sent from my HTC_PN071 using Tapatalk
 

marmalade

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Being a designer for mining products (intrinsically safe) there is a lot of validity to the above.


Keep in mind the positioning of the fuses (ie a fuse is of little use at the end of a 100A cable) and it's type (slow/fast blow etc). For our purposes generally we aren't driving inductive/capacitive loads so a fast blow is fine.


However there are posts where guys have had their main cabinet with psu's in their garages and the fuses at the display. It may be commonsense to most of us, but always have a fuse on the psu regardless. As Rup said, worst case scenario is not a problem with the display but with the cable shorting out to itself (being cut,crushed etc).


And although most modern switch mode psu's have a decent crowbar on their output to reduce the output current upon a short, it's not something to rely on. Don't do it, bad practice.


Not too relevant here but we also have to use encapsulated fuses to minimise the risk of an ignition source, however if in a plastic case keep an eye on temperatures. I have seen the cheaper ANL audio fuse holders literally melt and smoke under full load.


As an aside also take into account the vdrop across any fuse in the circuit they are essentially just low ohm fusible resistors.
 
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