70 volt PA speaker punch down for 19" rack

Question

I'm cleaning up a PA system for a school with 140 speakers in one zone. All of the wires from the speakers are making a home run back to the mechanical room. Currently they are all wire nutted in parallel (daisy chained wiring arrangements). I'd like to clean this up to some kind of 19" rack mounted punch down panel . Does anyone know of a panel on the market that would allow me to easily create this?

beacon_dave · Accepted Answer

Perhaps use standard DIN terminal mounting rails with 19" rack mount ears at either end ?

You can get them off-the-shelf like:

https://www.canford.co.uk/Index/19-inch-rack-DIN-rail-terminal-frames/CANFORD-RACK-MOUNTING-DIN-RAIL-FRAME#Image-2

With DIN terminals you can group and bus as you like to customise it to your needs.

beacon_dave · Answer

Just use staggered terminal jumper bars to connect every second terminal together (skipping over one terminal each time). All even numbered terminals are tied together and all odd numbered terminals are tied together onto two separate buses.

Add each speaker to a pair of adjacent terminals and they are now connected in parallel. Easy to re-jumper if you later want to create separate speaker zones in future.

Terminate all of your speakers on one side of the DIN rail terminal bock and your amplifier on the other side.

Some info on jumpers here:

Wiring Jumpers Part 2: Types and How we Use Them - YouTube

Using jumpers to wire every other terminal:

Terminal Block Jumpers - They Can Save You Time, Money, and Headaches - YouTube

stevedahl · Answer

Hello Dave;

Thank you for all of the great advice, The DIN rail was the key. I did find this on Amazon which solved the issue of adding all of the speakers with out too many jumper wires.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08XPX5CDQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

ANMBEST 2 In 16 Out Terminal Blocks Module, 25A DIN Rail and Panel Mounting Power Distribution Breakout Board for PLC Servo Power Amplifier

stevedahl · Answer

Thank you Dave, that was excellent advice.

Now the next piece. All of the Din connectors have a single pass through. Have you seen a din connector that maybe has 50 connections one each side of the DIN connector and one side is bonded together and isolated from the other side that is bonded together? This would easily allow me to place each pair of speaker wires in parallel?

70 volt PA speaker punch down for 19" rack

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