Best practice on how to use a perfboard
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Luca Nobili
Oct 11, 2011, 11:03:32 PM10/11/11
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Hi guys,
sorry to bother you with a rather beginner like question, but I just started to mess around with perfboards and I am having some problem.
I am trying to connect an LCD to an Arduino FIO. At the moment I soldered on a perfboard a series of 16 header pins for the LCD and two rows of header pins for the micro controller. Now I have to wire the LCD and the controller together.
So far I tried two different techniques:
1) Solder the wire to the hole adjacent to the pin and make a solder bridge. I find it messy and difficult, but maybe I did not find a good tutorial and not doing it properly. Does anybody have a URL to share?
2) Create a sort of loop at the end of the wire, pass the loop around the pin and secure it with a bit of solder. This is my free interpretation of what I believe it is called wire wrap. I actually find it better, but since this does not look like to be standard (did not find any tutorial mentioning it) I wander what the drawbacks are going to be.
How do you guys actually do it?
Thanks,
Luca
Taylan Ayken
Oct 12, 2011, 4:20:38 AM10/12/11
to tokyohac...@googlegroups.com
What I do is a mix of methods 1 and 2: I just solder one or two pins for holding the header in place, then I put the wire into the hole and bend it towards the pin. If the length and pitch is enough, I can make a loop but most of the time it is not needed. Then make a solder bridge. The wire helps with the shape of the solder, so instead of a big blob, you end up with some sort of elliptical shape. Using this for a long long time, never let me down.
From: Luca Nobili <lunob...@googlemail.com>
To: tokyohac...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2011 12:03 PM
Subject: [THS:13534] Best practice on how to use a perfboard
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Torsten Wagner
Oct 12, 2011, 6:00:58 AM10/12/11
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For this reason I prefer stripboards...
Solder the headers,
Solder the wires next to it...
If required use a driller or specialized tool to open the stripes at
required positions.
Solder the headers,
Solder the wires next to it...
If required use a driller or specialized tool to open the stripes at
required positions.
Finish....
As for the perfboard... if you want to do it as taught in electronic
courses. You would solder the header, solder a tiny piece of silver
wire (diameter 1-1.5mm) between the header solder point and the next
pin-hole. Put the cable in and solder both the cable and the end of
the silver wire.
However, this method is rather annoying exactly for this short
connections. Piece of wire runs hot very quickly and might be de
soldered on the other side already and you have to use a tool to hold
it in place otherwise you burn your fingers.
Another trick would be to make little silver wires with a 90deg angle.
Solder the header, put the wire in the pin hole next to the header.
Solder the end of the silver wire to the header joint, solder the pad
of the pin-hole which includes the silver wire. Turn the board over
and solder the connection wire to the silver wire.
Totti
MRE^2
Oct 12, 2011, 10:30:33 AM10/12/11
to TokyoHackerSpace
I use essentially the same methods as Taylan:
Solder the endpoints of the header (or chip, or whatever).
Strip the wire long, and insert through an adjacent hole.
Bend the wire over, towards the pin you want to connect to, so that it
touches the pin, or preferably passes right next to the pin (tight
against the pin).
Solder the pin to the wire.
Another method for longer legged parts (such as LEDs, capacitors, etc)
is to bend both the part leg and the wire towards each other, so that
they pass next to each other. Be sure they are tight against each
other and solder in place.
As much as possible, I use the legs of components as circuit traces.
So If I know I will have three wires solder to this capacitor leg,
then I will:
Anchor the capacitor down by soldering the hole the leg comes through.
Then bend over the leg, so that I can have a few holes for wires to
come through and hook to the leg. I will then anchor the far end of
the leg to another hole with solder.
Now I insert the wires through the holes directly under the leg, bend
them over the leg and solder together.
At any rate, some advice working with perf board:
1: It always looks ugly. Dont let anyone tell you its too ugly. There
is no such thing in perfboard assembly. Its a one time prototype
afterall.
2: Your only concern is to not bridge with adjacent circuit parts.
When it happens (and it will) you can fix it by the following method:
....a: be sure you have a chisel tip in your iron, or a good sharp
point tip. A fat tip wont work and only makes the problem worse.
....b: clean the tip very well on the wet sponge.
....c: use the chisel tip like a knife, to "cut" the solder bridge,
dragging the excess solder up onto the cleaned tip
....d: repeat the process until you have removed all the excess
solder.
....e: solder wick is another option, but as with the soldepult, you
risk sucking up solder from the connections you want to keep as well.
3: To save yourself a lot of frustration and heartache later when you
need to debug some miswired connections, avoid making too many hooks
in component leads or wires. Its much harder to desolder and pull the
wire out when it is all twisted up on something. For this reason, I
would advise against the method you are using now. Assuming you lift
the hook off the header pin, you still need to straighten it out to
remove it. Or you have to cut it. If the wire is short, or threaded
through a lot of board, replacing it might be hard. So, before
soldering down, always consider what strategy you will need to use if
you have to move that wire.
4: Keep your wires neatly bundled, and follow set routes around the
board. The time spent up front organizing the wires as you lay them
down pays off later.
5: When it all tests out, you can use loops of wire as tie downs for
larger bundles. Cut a short length, bend it into a U, insert both legs
into the board, pull tight and solder down.
6: When routing around an IC, be sure that you place the wires about 2
holes away from the chip. So, a wire that goes to pin 6, but passes
across pins 1-5, does so two holes away from the chip. Then, at the
pin 6 area, it bends 90 degrees, comes up next to the chip, and goes
under the board to solder down. The reason for this is so that you
always have access to any pin from the tip side, for at least two
wires. Whenever you need to lay in multiple wires on the same pin, you
simply fold one wire down next to the other. So, wire two folds down
and solders to wire one near the hole that wire one comes through,
then wire one solders to the pin.
And my two best pieces of advice:
7: Use multicolor coded wire. Don't try to just use one or two colors.
You will get lost REAL quick. Use the obvious red and black (or
orange / green) for all supply and ground connections. For buss
connections, such as the 7 or so wires to the LCD, cut up a length of
ethernet cable. There are 8 unique colors in there, organized into 4
color sets.
8: Print or draw your schematic on a big sheet. As you make a
connection, highlight the wire trace on the schematic, and write the
wire color next to it. Start with loops around the chip (such as pin 2
to pin 5) and power/ground connections. Then move outwards to
components, and finally buses. Often a chip will have two or more
ground connections. You can do them BETWEEN the rows of pins. Usually,
on my boards, the only wires directly under the chip, between the
legs, are either multiple power or multiple ground connections, depend
on which I have more of. All others route AROUND the IC.
Solder the endpoints of the header (or chip, or whatever).
Strip the wire long, and insert through an adjacent hole.
Bend the wire over, towards the pin you want to connect to, so that it
touches the pin, or preferably passes right next to the pin (tight
against the pin).
Solder the pin to the wire.
Another method for longer legged parts (such as LEDs, capacitors, etc)
is to bend both the part leg and the wire towards each other, so that
they pass next to each other. Be sure they are tight against each
other and solder in place.
As much as possible, I use the legs of components as circuit traces.
So If I know I will have three wires solder to this capacitor leg,
then I will:
Anchor the capacitor down by soldering the hole the leg comes through.
Then bend over the leg, so that I can have a few holes for wires to
come through and hook to the leg. I will then anchor the far end of
the leg to another hole with solder.
Now I insert the wires through the holes directly under the leg, bend
them over the leg and solder together.
At any rate, some advice working with perf board:
1: It always looks ugly. Dont let anyone tell you its too ugly. There
is no such thing in perfboard assembly. Its a one time prototype
afterall.
2: Your only concern is to not bridge with adjacent circuit parts.
When it happens (and it will) you can fix it by the following method:
....a: be sure you have a chisel tip in your iron, or a good sharp
point tip. A fat tip wont work and only makes the problem worse.
....b: clean the tip very well on the wet sponge.
....c: use the chisel tip like a knife, to "cut" the solder bridge,
dragging the excess solder up onto the cleaned tip
....d: repeat the process until you have removed all the excess
solder.
....e: solder wick is another option, but as with the soldepult, you
risk sucking up solder from the connections you want to keep as well.
3: To save yourself a lot of frustration and heartache later when you
need to debug some miswired connections, avoid making too many hooks
in component leads or wires. Its much harder to desolder and pull the
wire out when it is all twisted up on something. For this reason, I
would advise against the method you are using now. Assuming you lift
the hook off the header pin, you still need to straighten it out to
remove it. Or you have to cut it. If the wire is short, or threaded
through a lot of board, replacing it might be hard. So, before
soldering down, always consider what strategy you will need to use if
you have to move that wire.
4: Keep your wires neatly bundled, and follow set routes around the
board. The time spent up front organizing the wires as you lay them
down pays off later.
5: When it all tests out, you can use loops of wire as tie downs for
larger bundles. Cut a short length, bend it into a U, insert both legs
into the board, pull tight and solder down.
6: When routing around an IC, be sure that you place the wires about 2
holes away from the chip. So, a wire that goes to pin 6, but passes
across pins 1-5, does so two holes away from the chip. Then, at the
pin 6 area, it bends 90 degrees, comes up next to the chip, and goes
under the board to solder down. The reason for this is so that you
always have access to any pin from the tip side, for at least two
wires. Whenever you need to lay in multiple wires on the same pin, you
simply fold one wire down next to the other. So, wire two folds down
and solders to wire one near the hole that wire one comes through,
then wire one solders to the pin.
And my two best pieces of advice:
7: Use multicolor coded wire. Don't try to just use one or two colors.
You will get lost REAL quick. Use the obvious red and black (or
orange / green) for all supply and ground connections. For buss
connections, such as the 7 or so wires to the LCD, cut up a length of
ethernet cable. There are 8 unique colors in there, organized into 4
color sets.
8: Print or draw your schematic on a big sheet. As you make a
connection, highlight the wire trace on the schematic, and write the
wire color next to it. Start with loops around the chip (such as pin 2
to pin 5) and power/ground connections. Then move outwards to
components, and finally buses. Often a chip will have two or more
ground connections. You can do them BETWEEN the rows of pins. Usually,
on my boards, the only wires directly under the chip, between the
legs, are either multiple power or multiple ground connections, depend
on which I have more of. All others route AROUND the IC.
Torsten Wagner
Oct 12, 2011, 11:19:26 AM10/12/11
to tokyohac...@googlegroups.com
Hmmm... for some reason I have the impression stripeboards are not
that common in US?
I really love them. Its so easy to work with them since most of the
time the legs of parts are already enough to do the required bridging.
Some carefull consideration allows you to really make tide packed
boards and they require much less soldering
Any comments?
that common in US?
I really love them. Its so easy to work with them since most of the
time the legs of parts are already enough to do the required bridging.
Some carefull consideration allows you to really make tide packed
boards and they require much less soldering
Any comments?
Totti
Taylan Ayken
Oct 12, 2011, 11:52:54 AM10/12/11
to tokyohac...@googlegroups.com
In Turkey perfboards were more common, I don't remember seeing any stripeboards at shops.
But still with perfboards you can sometimes tightly pack some "modules". I have a modular line follower design where I can swap out line finder modules, motor driver module or power regulator module. I had enough spare to make 2-3 more.
From: Torsten Wagner <torsten...@gmail.com>
To: tokyohac...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2011 12:19 AM
Subject: Re: [THS:13558] Re: Best practice on how to use a perfboard
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Luca Nobili
Oct 13, 2011, 12:55:34 AM10/13/11
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Hi guys,
all these answers where really useful, thanks for that!!
I really like the suggestion about using the hole near the pin and use the wire itself to create the bridge by bending it to the pin. I actually did not think about it. The only drawback I see is that, if I understand it correctly, the wire has to be on the same side of the components, since the end of the wire has to be on the same side of the pin.
By using the "wire wrap" method, I managed to have my lcd, controller and potentiometer (for lcd contrast) on one side of the board and all the wiring on the other side. It looks clean on one side and ugly only on the bottom side.
A few thing I learn by doing it is:
a) Strip enough wire so that, once you wrapped the wire around the pin you still have enough length to pull it tight using a pair of pliers.
b) Do not let the isolating part of the wire go too close to the pin, it will get in to the way when you try to connect the next pin. This is another
reason to give you some leeway when you strip the wire.
I had to "edit" a couple of connections and yes I had to do pretty much what MRE describes: heat up the soldered connection while pulling the wire loop off the pin. After that, I did have to cut the end of the wire, re-strip it and do a new loop. My personal opinion is that, although annoying, it was not too difficult and the benefit of having all my wires on one side of the board would counterbalance the annoyance.
Totti's suggestions about using tiny pieces of silver wire are interesting, but they sound like they are a lot of work and ...well they involve TINY pieces, which I am not sure my hands (and patience) would handle.
Stripboards are an option, I did not see them at Akizukidenshi, but I must admit I did not look carefully, they probably had them. I surely would like to try them, maybe my next project I will give them a shot.
A special mention to MRE; thanks for the thorough answer. The suggestion about using ethernet cable to do bus connections is great!! I wish I knew it before, I would have 100% used it to do my lcd wiring.
all these answers where really useful, thanks for that!!
I really like the suggestion about using the hole near the pin and use the wire itself to create the bridge by bending it to the pin. I actually did not think about it. The only drawback I see is that, if I understand it correctly, the wire has to be on the same side of the components, since the end of the wire has to be on the same side of the pin.
By using the "wire wrap" method, I managed to have my lcd, controller and potentiometer (for lcd contrast) on one side of the board and all the wiring on the other side. It looks clean on one side and ugly only on the bottom side.
A few thing I learn by doing it is:
a) Strip enough wire so that, once you wrapped the wire around the pin you still have enough length to pull it tight using a pair of pliers.
b) Do not let the isolating part of the wire go too close to the pin, it will get in to the way when you try to connect the next pin. This is another
reason to give you some leeway when you strip the wire.
I had to "edit" a couple of connections and yes I had to do pretty much what MRE describes: heat up the soldered connection while pulling the wire loop off the pin. After that, I did have to cut the end of the wire, re-strip it and do a new loop. My personal opinion is that, although annoying, it was not too difficult and the benefit of having all my wires on one side of the board would counterbalance the annoyance.
Totti's suggestions about using tiny pieces of silver wire are interesting, but they sound like they are a lot of work and ...well they involve TINY pieces, which I am not sure my hands (and patience) would handle.
Stripboards are an option, I did not see them at Akizukidenshi, but I must admit I did not look carefully, they probably had them. I surely would like to try them, maybe my next project I will give them a shot.
A special mention to MRE; thanks for the thorough answer. The suggestion about using ethernet cable to do bus connections is great!! I wish I knew it before, I would have 100% used it to do my lcd wiring.
A final point: thanks to you guys, this thread turned out to be very interesting, how about making it a blog entry in the THS site? I am sure I am not the only person out there that was wondering about how to use perfboards.
Luca
MRE^2
Oct 13, 2011, 3:36:21 AM10/13/11
to TokyoHackerSpace
Good idea Luca.
And yes, with my method, wire and components on top. Wire only passes
to the botom when soldering. But i mix a bit. Often i put power wires
on bottom.
Totti, strip board is unommon in the US als. Its available, but not
used much.
And yes, with my method, wire and components on top. Wire only passes
to the botom when soldering. But i mix a bit. Often i put power wires
on bottom.
Totti, strip board is unommon in the US als. Its available, but not
used much.
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