Six-channel 30A LED driver board on two-layer copper

Oct 21, 2026 Last reply: 45 seconds ago 3 Replies
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The hardest problem here is driving six channels at 5A each, 30A in total, from a touchscreen that only speaks 3.3V logic. Gate-to-source threshold requirements rule out direct switching at that level, and the maker handled it with a Microchip MIC4416 low-side driver that translates the logic up to the gate voltages the MOSFETs need. That decision sits at the heart of the whole design.



The board, named Slim Sculpt PRO V3.0, is a two-layer PCB with 2oz copper, laid out in KiCad 5 as a 12V low-side switching controller. Routing that much current on two layers without an external bus bar strikes me as a bold call, and it will be interesting to see how it performs. Power comes from a Murata OKI-78SR switching regulator that drops 12V down to 5V for the LCD, which draws 0.5A. A linear part would have overheated at that drop, so the switching route makes sense to me.



What stands out most is the thermal homework. The ROHM RQ3E080BN MOSFETs, rated 30V and 15A with 15.2 mOhm maximum RDS(on), work out to 0.38W per channel at 5A. With a junction-to-ambient thermal resistance of 62.5 C/W that gives a 23.75 C rise, putting the junction near 48.75 C at 25 C ambient. The maker worked this through in a Word document and studied the datasheet characteristic curves during part selection, which is exactly the diligence I want to see in a shared project.



One open point: the exact circuit function of the rendered board is not spelled out yet. With the series only two parts in, there is still plenty left to explain about how the channels come together.



Project by MicroType Engineering. Watch it on their YouTube channel:

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Picking the OKI-78SR switching regulator looks like the right call to me. A linear part dropping 12V down to 5V for a 0.5A LCD would have overheated, so avoiding that failure mode seems worth any extra switching noise it might invite. I would still be curious how the regulator's switching activity sits next to the low-side gate drive on a two-layer board like this.

How did the maker deal with current density on the two-layer 2oz copper without a bus bar? I am wondering whether the return paths for all six 5A channels share a ground pour on the bottom layer, or whether each channel gets its own dedicated trace width all the way back to the supply.

Since the junction estimate of 48.75 C assumes 25 C ambient, a useful addition to the series would be repeating the calculation at a hotter enclosure temperature, say 40 or 50 C ambient, to show how quickly the margin shrinks. Viewers designing for warm environments would benefit from seeing that worked through alongside the existing numbers in the same document.

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