Hi Bruce! Did you get the shield assembled ok?

The little PCB is because the motors come with an ELCO 8283 female connector on it and it's more reliable to use a breakout than to chop it off and try to fit new connectors. If you don't have the same motors then you might not benefit from it - or might be better just using screw terminal blocks. Being able to have symmetrical cables was another reason to use 0.1" connectors on both places. ACtually I don't think it's a very smart choice, strength-wise (subject to some twisting forces), but it's very standard that has it's advantages that I thought were worth the weakness.

If you want it, I've just uploaded the sch+brd and gerbers to the downloads section, and the little printable holder is in this zip of printable / cuttable parts.

Parts:
The 8283 male connector that goes on the PCB
IDC fit 4-way 0.1" pitch female wire-mount connectors - red coloured ones are for the gauge of wire I'm using.
Caps for the connectors
There's a special tool used to fit them - but I daresay a carefully wielded screwdriver or plier tip could do something similar.

There are better pin headers to go with these connectors, with polarising and locking features and things like that, but I wanted to be able to connect them up in both directions so I make do with plain 0.1" pin headers.

sn