Perfboard Prototyping

[TorqueRanger]

I am in the process of designing a couple thing which needs to get mounted on a board ... But my problem is that I have no time to etch my own boards and with my 2 small children and my work area being  the kitchen table it's impossible...So where can I get some pad per hole perfboard relative cheaply??? Also is there an easy way to remove the unused pads  or anyway of making it look better than it is??? 

[grumpydoc]

Just about anywhere.

ebay seems as good a place as anywhere, price wise, or a HamFest if there are any happening near you, or Farnell/Element 14 (prices a bit high though), or even Mike at mikeselectricstuff.

[TorqueRanger]

Just about anywhere.

ebay seems as good a place as anywhere, price wise, or a HamFest if there are any happening near you, or Farnell/Element 14 (prices a bit high though), or even Mike at mikeselectricstuff.

Oh ok cause i am looking to buy 5 to 10 boards and was not sure if the ebay boards where any good????5

I am in the process of designing a couple thing which needs to get mounted on a board ... But my problem is that I have no time to etch my own boards and with my 2 small children and my work area being  the kitchen table it's impossible...

That's why people send of their design to budged board houses, these days in China. I stopped etching my own boards long ago.

Also is there an easy way to remove the unused pads  or anyway of making it look better than it is???

One thing to make it look better is to do all the wiring on the soldering side. This way the component side remains looking tidy, and the soldering side looks a bit more ugly.

Another thing to make it look better is to plan ahead. It is up to you if you want to do it the old-fashioned way with paper and pencil

   http://www.eleinmec.com/downloads/sbps.pdf

with special perfboard/stripboard software

  http://veecad.com/
  http://www.marlwifi.org.nz/other/stripboard-magic
  http://www.heyrick.co.uk/software/verodes/
  http://www.abacom-online.de/uk/html/lochmaster.html
Thanks for help guys  and will have to check this out...

or just with a normal PCB layout tool and some

[Nirios]

Oh ok cause i am looking to buy 5 to 10 boards and was not sure if the ebay boards where any good????5

Here are the ones I purchased eBay auction: #200871567843 awhile ago.  The quality was great but it just took a few weeks to arrive from China.

[grumpydoc]

Oh ok cause i am looking to buy 5 to 10 boards and was not sure if the ebay boards where any good?

I bought a couple of lots of SRBP boards which were as good as any other's I've had and cheaper.

[ptricks]

Watch out for the made in China boards, especially the ones that are really cheap. I bought some of them on a whim and they are the worst possible quality and smell awful, pads come off easily, the boards are flimsy.  The boards I currently use are not the cheapest but they are plated through holes , FR4 material, and very high quality.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/usacircuits/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686e

[mianchen]

Oh ok cause i am looking to buy 5 to 10 boards and was not sure if the ebay boards where any good????5

Here are the ones I purchased eBay auction: #200871567843 awhile ago.  The quality was great but it just took a few weeks to arrive from China.

These ones look like the good ones I bought from 2 other different sellers from China - they are good quality. I also bought some extremely cheap paper based ones, they DO smell horrible, quality are bad, not recommended, unless you are really struggle with your budget.

Watch out for the made in China boards, especially the ones that are really cheap. I bought some of them on a whim and they are the worst possible quality and smell awful, pads come off easily, the boards are flimsy.  The boards I currently use are not the cheapest but they are plated through holes , FR4 material, and very high quality.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/usacircuits/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686e

They are too big and too expensive to my taste :< plus I'm not in US of A.

[LEECH666]

I would invest a little bit more and go for an FR4 perfboard. The pads don't come off as easily on those.

I really like Blackboard as a perfboard design tool:

http://dangerousprototypes.com/2012/04/24/blackboard-perf-board-design-utility/
http://blackboard.serverpool.org/Home.html

Here are a few pictures of my lastest work done with the help of Blackboard.

     





Sorry I just like showing off my pictures.

Cheers,
Florian

[david77]

Blackboard looks nice, I'll have to check it out as I'm embarking on a big perfboard project soon.

Danke, Florian

[ivan747]

I have found Jameco to be a nice source for cheap hobbyist electronics. They sell generic components cheaper than Digi-Key's branded ones and sell prototyping items.

Here's a bunch of prototyping solutions from Jameco. You can filter them by type:

http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDrillDownView?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&categoryName=cat_65&subCategoryName=Electronic%20Design%20%2F%20Prototyping%20Systems&category=6520&refine=1&position=1&history=cbg8szs9%7CsubCategoryName~Electronic%2BDesign%5Ecategory~65%5EcategoryName~category_root%5EprodPage~15%5Epage~SEARCH%252BNAV

[AlphZeta]

I usually buy my boards from MPJA (http://www.mpja.com/Proto-Boards/products/284/) or Allelectronics (http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/category/455/Perf-Boards/1.html), they also have a lot of other interesting stuff. The cheap eBay boards are FR1 boards and as others mentioned, the pads quality are not that great. However, if you use leaded solder and solder at a lower temperature (e.g. 330 degree C) then it actually works pretty well. The only thing I don't like those cheap eBay FR1 PCBs is that when ironed, they give off horrible smell as if they were treated with some potent chemicals or something... But if you have proper ventilation, this shouldn't be too much of a deal.

[ptricks]

The only thing I don't like those cheap eBay FR1 PCBs is that when ironed, they give off horrible smell as if they were treated with some potent chemicals or something... But if you have proper ventilation, this shouldn't be too much of a deal.

The boards will also corrode parts in the long term. The chemical smell is from formaldehyde and phenols  , very nasty stuff and can harm even at low levels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formaldehyde

Occupational exposure to formaldehyde by inhalation is mainly from three types of sources: thermal or chemical decomposition of formaldehyde-based resins, formaldehyde emission from aqueous solutions (for example, embalming fluids), and the production of formaldehyde resulting from the combustion of a variety of organic compounds (for example, exhaust gases). Formaldehyde can be toxic, allergenic, and carcinogenic.Because formaldehyde resins are used in many construction materials it is one of the more common indoor air pollutants. At concentrations above 0.1 ppm in air formaldehyde can irritate the eyes and mucous membranes, resulting in watery eyes. Formaldehyde inhaled at this concentration may cause headaches, a burning sensation in the throat, and difficulty breathing, and can trigger or aggravate asthma symptoms.

FR-1 & FR-2 are  phenolic paper.
FR- 3 is still paper but using an epoxy instead of phenols.
FR-4 is glass epoxy

The FR is for fire retardant.

[ChrisGreece52]

Also Dave recieved a pretty good preffboard from a fan EEV Blog mailbag episode 407# its pretty good
<----   Video
http://www.whitewing.co.uk/protoboard.html <------- Boards (you can order it international
Some Photos Of the Actual Board




It realy worth it

Thanks

[codeboy2k]

[slightly off topic]

The other day, I was trying to save Mike's bandwidth, and went to Coral Cache to read his web pages, because going there directly said that the bandwidth has been exceeded.

However, Coral Cache servers could not be found at all (!!), and even NS lookups show no such domain.

Normally with Coral Cache you add .nyud.net to the end of any website, and the cache will fetch the pages and serve it from locally cached copies around the world, thereby saving the bandwidth of the website owner, making the response faster, and saving bandwidth of the Internet at large.

For example, Mike's page would be http://www.whitewing.co.uk.nyud.net/protoboard.html

However, I can't seem to get to anything on .nyud.net anymore, although the Coral Content Distribution Network http://www.coralcdn.org/ seems to be up and doesn't mention any problems with the caching servers

Today, Mike's pages are back up, but still Coral Cache .nyud.net domains are not there for me. Being able to cache it would save Mike from another bandwidth exceeded issue again.

Can anyone get to anything on .nyud.net ?? 
You can cache any web page .. just add .nyud.net to the end of the host part.
For example http://cnn.com.nyud.net, but nothing works for me anymore

[IanB]

Not sure. *.nyud.net seems to be working from here.

[miceuz]

personally I hate these perfboards - the pads come off easlity and it's a hell to rework. If I can't etch my own board, I opt out to simple copper clad board - you solder stuf directly on copper and cut traces with exacto knife or do it "manhattan" style.

[LEECH666]

That shouldn't happen if you double sided perf boards with plated through holes, but those are less common.

[Chipset]

That shouldn't happen if you double sided perf boards with plated through holes, but those are less common.

DX.com has plenty of those for quite reasonable prices.

[TorqueRanger]

personally I hate these perfboards - the pads come off easlity and it's a hell to rework. If I can't etch my own board, I opt out to simple copper clad board - you solder stuf directly on copper and cut traces with exacto knife or do it "manhattan" style.

Really can I get some pics of what your talking about please

[m12lrpv]

That shouldn't happen if you double sided perf boards with plated through holes, but those are less common.

DX.com has plenty of those for quite reasonable prices.

Agreed. I bought a stack of boards of different sizes from DX and they've been great to use.

[DaveW]

personally I hate these perfboards - the pads come off easlity and it's a hell to rework. If I can't etch my own board, I opt out to simple copper clad board - you solder stuf directly on copper and cut traces with exacto knife or do it "manhattan" style.

Really can I get some pics of what your talking about please

This covers the technique and has some pictures in it.
http://wdv.com/Electronics/Fab/ManhattanConstructionTechniques.pdf

And for a really nice example of it,
http://aa7ee.wordpress.com/tag/manhattan-construction/

[AlphZeta]

personally I hate these perfboards - the pads come off easlity and it's a hell to rework. If I can't etch my own board, I opt out to simple copper clad board - you solder stuf directly on copper and cut traces with exacto knife or do it "manhattan" style.

Really can I get some pics of what your talking about please

This covers the technique and has some pictures in it.
http://wdv.com/Electronics/Fab/ManhattanConstructionTechniques.pdf

And for a really nice example of it,
http://aa7ee.wordpress.com/tag/manhattan-construction/

I remember seeing this technique quite often years back when component sizes were rather large. It was a rather popular technique mainly for HAM radio operators since the copper clad also serves as a large ground plane which makes HF circuit more stable. The main draw back of this technique is that, in my opinion, it only works when you have a handful of relatively large components to solder. For ICs with more pins, it would be very time consuming to make the board. But once done, it definitely is  a nice piece of art.

[miceuz]

personally I hate these perfboards - the pads come off easlity and it's a hell to rework. If I can't etch my own board, I opt out to simple copper clad board - you solder stuf directly on copper and cut traces with exacto knife or do it "manhattan" style.

Really can I get some pics of what your talking about please

It's a couple of photos of my builds I have

[kfitch42]

That shouldn't happen if you double sided perf boards with plated through holes, but those are less common.

DX.com has plenty of those for quite reasonable prices.

Yikes be careful what you search for on there. I went to dx.com and searched for "perf board", nothing. "plated through hole", nope not it. Let me try just "through hole"... lots of results ... definitely NOT what I was looking for 

[kripton2035]

search for "Prototype" and you will get 75 of them at Dx.com

[Obin]

I would invest a little bit more and go for an FR4 perfboard. The pads don't come off as easily on those.

I really like Blackboard as a perfboard design tool:

http://dangerousprototypes.com/2012/04/24/blackboard-perf-board-design-utility/
http://blackboard.serverpool.org/Home.html

Cheers,
Florian

The link http://blackboard.serverpool.org/Home.html seems to be dead... Is there another way to get the software?

[kripton2035]

you can still get it here, on a web archive of these pages
http://web.archive.org/web/20110627024338/http://blackboard.serverpool.org/fileDownload.do?download_id=6

[kripton2035]

sorry my previous link gave an old version
here are the latests : http://web.archive.org/web/20120101185243/http://blackboard.serverpool.org/Download.html