Protoboard with metal pads

[AussieBruce]

I’m an oldie and have staunchly stuck with protoboard construction, mostly FRP 0.1” perforated board with no metal on either side. My latest project involves a number of plug in headers on the board, they are a solid design with a fair amount of insertion force so I checked out protoboard with circular tinned pads on every hole, on both sides (I initially thought they were thru-hole but the ones I got aren’t). The metal does appear to make the boards stiffer which is what I want.

However, I quickly found out that the metal lands represent a serious complication once I started inserting and connecting components. Every single solder point represents a potential short to an adjacent hole, on either side, you virtually need to examine every step with a magnifier and unavoidably some of the clearances turn out to be worryingly small. My construction rate dropped to a slow crawl. I wasn’t very far in before I abandoned the whole thing and reverted to board with no metal pads on either side.

Just wondering whether there is a recommended technique for dealing with this type of protoboard. It is sold so people must be using it. 

 

[jpanhalt]

It's not clear to me what you want.  Do you want plated-through (PTH), single-hole per pad boards?  Do you want any holes to be connected to other holes?  A picture of the board you have would help.  I have some single-pad per hole boards with PTH.  I use them rarely as I prefer either connected PTH pads or just a sheet of copper on both sides with non-PTH holes.

[Psi]

Do you mean the kind of protoboard where each hole has it's own square pad that is isolated from all others?

I agree, we need a photo to see what you are meaning.

[Gyro]

I use tinned copper PTH (plated through hole) boards that I picked up cheap on Amazon. They appear to have solder resist around the pads, certainly not bare FR4 and don't seem to bridge too easily. Brand name Elegoo*

I may be that your soldering technique needs a little adjustment compared to bare matrix board. Possibly a finer tip and thinner solder. The plated holes will tend to pull in the solder by capillary action, leaving less to bridge.

A possible solution might be to continue to use your faithful bare matrix boards but just place and solder small pieces of PTH matrix board behind the headers, pin length permitting.


Edit: *UK Amazon link so you can at least see what they look like (you can see copper text under the solder resist)... https://www.amazon.co.uk/ELEGOO-Prototype-Soldering-Compatible-Arduino/dp/B0734XYJPM

[pcprogrammer]

I use the double sided platted through hole ones like found here: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32994916883.html for a lot of my prototyping.

Also make use of smd to dip converters for things like sop8. Other smd components can be directly soldered to the pads. 0805 resistors and capacitors work great, but 1206 also fits without shorts.

[jwet]

i have used little brass washers to beef up solder joints.  It would work on bare perf board.

[Peabody]

I use these:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832760861960.html

They duplicate the pattern of a breadboard, and I have found them to be very convenient.  But they are hard to find.  The link above says they have six left.  That may be true or not, but in general they are hard to find.