Roger, thank you for your explaination of the pack voltage details... you filled it in a little better than me
SGC, it would be great if we could do some multiple voltage level beta testing
ga, I don't think you need to worry about that. We are not trying to protect from someone hooking up a 30-volt power supply. We are just trying to protect from spikes. A 1us spike may generate 5W for 1us, but that won't generate any heat. As long as it can handle the peak current and voltage that we need to clamp, it is no issue.
As for prototype PCB professionally made... Did I ever mention that is exactly what the company that I work for does? I had a word with someone here. THIS IS NOT OFFICIAL INFORMATION. If Paul were to source the parts from Digikey and source the boards from PCBCart.com or one of the other el-cheapo custom board houses and put all that in a box and send it to us... we could ship him 10 control boards, wave soldered for under 500 bucks. This would be visually inspected, no special certifications, etc. The more we make, the better the "per board" price. The more we do (sourcing parts, surface mounting, post-testing) the more cost.
So Paul... PM me if you are interested. I would not bother with less than 10 as the fixed costs would make the board price a little silly.
On the other hand... I'd seriously find the time to solder everything by hand myself for Beta testers...