Newbie question : I can't understand the shunt resistor footprint!

Are you sure?
If you had followed the Kelvin connection link to wikipedia, you would have seen an exact example, combined with explanation. I really could not explain it better myself.

Yeah Pretty sure! Can you expalin how kelvin connection work if the there’s only two pads ? as on the left of the precedent image?

Read the wikipedia page linked to earlier, or read one of the gazillion other tutorials for kelvin connections.

I do want to help, but in this case, I hope that motivating you to find something that is easy to find yourself helps you to become more self reliant.

If you have a component with 4 pads, then you should have a symbol with 4 pads, and a footprint with 4 pads. I don’t know if the symbol for a shunt reistor with 4 pads exist, but it’s very easy to make your own symbol.
Then you can do your schematic and layout without any issue.

If you have a shunt with only 2 pads, then you connect it as a simple resistor, and you have to be careful in your layout to have the measurement track reach the pads with the proper angle.

This recommendation from Vishay is a good compromise between effort for a special footprint and accuracy.

You may find better suggestions in the Application Note from AD

But that would need a self designed footprint and a 4-wire symbol.

BR

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Have a look at this

Newer versions of kicad allow finer control of “net ties” so this “hack” isn’t needed but this method shows how such kelvin sense points can and should be done

and one of the gitlab issues where kelvin points were the use-case

That was mine, three years ago. Recent KiCad now supports the Kelvin sense without DRC errors properly these days

Thanks, I really appreciate that. Now, I understand better how Kelvin connection works. I can now figure out that in the first two images of my first post, it’s a kelvin connection. But I still can’t understand if in the datasheet, it’s really a kelvin connection since the image on the right half which represents the internal sections of the shunt resistor having 4 pads, two for current sensing and the other ones for current flowing (high voltage). But the figure on the left, there’s no appearing pads! So that confusing! That was the question I want to ask from the beginning.

I still want to figure out if the shunt resistor presented below in the datasheet has a kelvin connection or not! The images below are confusing. So, before I but it, I need to make sure if it as a kelvin connection or not first!

Actually, I can’t figure out how to connect the sensing pads in case of 4 pads since they are not appearing on the bottom of the component?

Let me put it this way:

No, it doesn’t have, and neither does the 4-pad resistor. There’s no kelvin connection inside the resistor, it’s just an ordinary resistor, and the kelvin connection is formed with symmetric traces. The 4-pad resistor just fools you to think it’s something special, but actually it’s a 2-pad resistor where each of the 2 pads have been physically split to resemble two different sized pads. If you would have understood the kelvin measurement principle you would have understood this, too.

Aha, finally !!! Thank you!! Since the current sensing wires are going out from the same pads where the current flows from + to -, it’s not a kelvin connection! right ? neither here :slight_smile: !!


Thank you so much for the clarification !

In my understanding / language it is a question of what point the kelvin connection is made to.

On a 4-pin/pad current sense resistor it is formed to a point internally in the resistor, which is controlled by the design and manufacture of the resistor and thus presumed (or verified) to be pretty accurate.

On a 2-pin/pad current sense resistor with the PCB layout as you show it, the kelvin connection is formed to the pads on the PCB. This excludes errors from the high current traces on the PCB, but includes errors from the pad/resistor interface, including the solder and connection surfaces on the resistor itself.
This may not be accurate enough for high-precision applications, but as paulvdh says may be a relatively small error in many cases, as the solder connection is fairly low resistance.

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So, the best option will be to go for a 4-pad kelvin connection shunt resistor since I am using it for low current and voltages (less than 1A and 5V), right ? Because according to paulvdh and as I understood, 4-pads (terminal) resistors are becoming obsolete.

It depends what level of accuracy you need?
Do you just want to know roughly what the current is, and can allow for a perhaps 1% (guesstimate) error? 2-pad with kelvin connection on the PCB (like your example) will probably suffice.
Or do you need 0,01% (guesstimate) accuracy? 4-pad is the way to go!

Note, you will have to figure out the % accuracy for each option; the values I wrote above are by no means to be taken at face value - I just grabbed something out of thin air for an illustration…

Thank you again for the clarification, actually 1% is enough for me! as I can see in different datasheets, 2-pads connection can provide that precision! So, I will need to buy a 2-pad shunt resistor and do the kelvin connection on the PCB, right ? is there any already available footprints for that ?

I would use a regular resistor footprint and just add the sense traces where it’s practical.

Perhaps you should check the Kicad libraries yourself.
If there is a suitable footprint that matches your data sheet, use it. If not, modify the Kicad footprint to suit or create a new footprint yourself.

That used to be “common knowledge”, but I’m not sure about that anymore. In the video below, @14:57 you see a 4-terminal shunt resistor, but the “sense” pads are shorted with the “power” pads. Keithley probably knows what they are doing (or at least, they did before the company changed name 5x or so)

Rabbit linked to the analog website with a talk about different types of connections to current shunt resistors, but unfortunately this method is not part of the comparison. Their Option C (and also D) is the best they have measured, in both these methods, the kelvin connections are not used as intended but are both shorted to either high current track. And it is also the closest to just using two big pads and tapping of the sense wires from the inside of the same pads. When you have a shunt resistor with a value of 0.5m Ohm and push 20A through it, then lowering the resistance between the pads and the resistor itself is apparently the main goal. Also note that options A, B, and E are around 4% off, and all are too low ??? C and D are the only ones that are within the tolerance of the resistor itself. Also curious that the Top Pad method has such a big deviation, but unfortunately they have not mentioned where on the pad they measured.

yup I know :wink: i provided the additional input that request as well as other discussions on this topic.