Terminals for star grounding?

[ianmgull]

So in situations such as multi effects boxes or any other time you have multiple PCBs in one unit you have to figure out a way to connect all of the grounds. I am in a similar situation since I would like to star ground the box instead of daisy chaining grounds. I'm to the point where I have between 20-30 wires going to ground and I need an efficient way to connect them. So far the best idea I have come up with is to connect all grounds to an empty piece of perf board and connect the DC jack but this solution is less than elegant. I need some sort of terminal to connect all the ground wires to. Space efficiency is one of my main concerns.  Does anybody have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Ian

[Franky]

If your wires are thin enough, you can tie them by 2 or 3, and use a terminal like those you can find in tube amps:

[grapefruit]

However you decide to connect your wires I would recommend that the star ground point be the main filter capacitor. Power comes in, goes to filter cap (rectified if necessary) then the filter cap is the star ground point for everything else. I would generally have PCB mounted plug in connectors for power wiring, including ground, and they could all have their own tracks back to the filter cap (or have thick, short tracks).

Also, I'm no sure what you're hooking up but you don't have to star ground everything. You might want to have each PCB ground going right back to the filter cap, but a socket or something that is related to that PCB may be just as good/better having its ground connected to that PCB. Some PCB's could be daisy chained too.

You may find this useful...
http://www.rane.com/note151.html

Cheers,
Stewart.