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How to calculate track width?

Hey Peeps!

Hope you all doing good.

i'm currently designing a pcb in Altium designer for 2 motors which will consume a current of approximately 5amp for a very short interval of time like 500ms or 1s max, how much should i keep the minimum track width??

Thanks

jmarkwolf over 5 years ago

Nice free app below.

Saturn PCB Toolkit - Saturn PCB Design | Saturn PCB Design
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tarribred61 over 5 years ago in reply to jmarkwolf

Also, 500ms to 1 sec is a long enough time to heat up a track. Make sure you design in more than the minimum calculated value to account for elevated ambient temperature and tolerances and such. Overdesign by factor of 2 or so. Track width will depend on copper thickness used. If it is a one-off or only a few to build you might be able to leave the solder mask off the tracks and then add solder to the exposed finished copper tracks if you need to increase current handling. If PCB finish is hot air leveled solder this adds a little bit of metal also. Doing something like that might help you avoid a 2-oz copper PCB to start with.
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