Distributor Hub for 5.08mm Pluggable Screw Terminals for Modelrailroad

This is a simple Distributor Hub that I sketched up in an afternoon, printed and wired together. You can connect your control station with up to 4 consumers (be that multiple rail blocks, accessory decoders, etc). Using these standard terminals also allows for rather quick swapping between different tracks and control stations.

Additional Parts:

I used these Pluggable Screw Terminals with Right Angle Connectors (Amazon.de), but you can likely substitute these easily (as long as you get Right Angle Connectors). This project uses 1x 2pin and 2x4pin (although you can likely substitute 1x4pin=2x2pin)

For wire I used left over Household wire. They aren't ideal for soldering such projects, but fulfill the wire gauge requirements (remember, model railroad control stations can power up to 3A/5A, some station can do ridiculously high numbers, and we don't want the Distributor to go up in smoke because of a couple hungry locos/short circuit)

Print Setting:

• Procedure: SLA (Resin)

• Printer: Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra 16k

• Material: Elegoo ABS-like Resin 3.0 (White)

• Layer Height: 50um

Known Flaws/Notes:

With it being slapped together there are a couple flaws/things of note:

• The Wiring Space below the Terminals is quite small, the hub should probably be taller to give more room

• The Tolerances between the Floor, Body and Roof are way to generous, they fit incredibly loosely, gluing together is probably ideal

• The Tolerances for the terminal pins are quite tight. FDM printing or a smidge of solder on the pins prior to inserting can make inserting nearly impossible

• This model was designed for Resin printing, the Body could cause problems when printed with FDM and may require supports. There is also some over detailing FDM might not capture, but probably won't cause issues

• I am not particularly experienced in supporting Resin prints, I got some edge sagging on the floor. I have placed some more supports prior to uploading, but I am not sure this fixes all the surface issues. You might be better in supporting then me.

• In general having to print 3 parts is a bit silly, but required due to having to insert the terminals from the top, and soldering is already enough of a pain with bottom access. Redesign for straight connectors might help, but that might reduce the wiring room

• Using a PCB instead of using the body to hold the terminals (while also skipping the wiring step) might be a more sensible design, but then you would need to manufacturer a PCB, which is why I did what I did.

• You have to be precise while soldering, make sure you don't produce any short circuits between the pins

• No screw holes for mounting it to the underside of a layout ( but you could design your own floor piece to your specifications, FreeCAD files are included)

• It is a distributor, which means all consumer still hang on the same booster/control station. If you are overloading it with your layout, this box won't help (it will just enable you to make it worse)