My team was looking to build a self-driving cart (anyone with experience on that, while I’m on the subject?) and would obviously need some way to power our motors. It doesn’t make any sense to me to sink in $200 for a PDB to power about 4 motors and an Arduino (and some lights, and a DC/AC inverter) but the other option that AndyMark has is from the cheap and dirty kit, which doesn’t support the 40A breakers. Does anybody have any suggestions? Even a fuse system could work, anything under $80 or so. Thanks!
As others have said, you can use the really old style blocks.
If you’re only using a few, you can get some individual inline fuse holders from amazon
It’s also possible to get 40 amp fuses (not auto resetting breaker) that are the blade size (smaller) fuses if you want. http://www.mcmaster.com/#7460k39/=susd5r
Thanks everyone for the quick responses, you solved my problem.
Just to answer the question, I would prefer having them just since the motors will be drawing a lot of current. We could probably make do without, but I like having the option.
There are lots of options with these breakers, in addition to the one I linked w/o a bracket and auto reset there are manual reset and ones with brackets.
You should be all in for ~$20 or so depending on how many you actually use. You can also find those style of breakers in a decent auto parts store though they typically will not stock the buss bars, snap in brackets or boots. They also have other styles of breakers such as those used as the FRC main breaker in various amperage and mounting styles. http://www.waytekwire.com/products/1366/Circuit-Breakers/
It is nice having the option of 40A breakers, but we built an 300lb autonomous Roomba-like robot this year for a lake in our area (cue water game comments), and even when we were running 48" paddlewheels and 75lb conveyor belts off of CIMs, we never blew a 30A breaker, even in full sunlight. This was a huge worry for us, but we just used an old FRC PDB (I’m forgetting which one), and we never looked back.