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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Stripboard - ins and outs
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Mixtel90 Guru  Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7584 |
I think that this is worth a topic of its own. Far better than cluttering up other threads. :) People may get the impression that I don't like stripboard. That's wrong. I just think that, like solderless breadboards, it has its place. It has some advantages and some disadvantages. Copied from the Olimex board discussion: Stan: Me: Stan: Now we can carry on without disturbing other threads. :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| dddns Guru Joined: 20/09/2024 Location: GermanyPosts: 380 |
I agree. 20 years ago I loved them, 10 ago I liked them and nowadays I only use them for real quick tiny tests. If there is something to assemble which should last for some days test period, I found for me that it is the best and fastest and most low cost way to use kicad and mill the sample. |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7584 |
I'll carry on with the numbers, Stan. :) 1. I use a lot of breakout boards in my designs. That's because I want to use chips that I can't (yet anyway) solder myself. I really don't want to add more breakouts for things like USB-A sockets, which are easy to solder if you can get the holes to line up. Unfortunately most manufacturers no longer use 0.1in matrix for anything other than the most mundane connectors now. Even 0.1in headers have been replaced by 2mm (or less) pitch in many cases now. 2. I can take a new PCB out of the pack and mount components on it immediately. If the PCB is 12 months old I usually give it a wipe with isopropyl alcohol first. Because all the pads are tinned nothing else is needed, the flux is enough. I have some excellent tinned stripboard that works almost as well, but I also have offcuts of ordinary bare copper stripboard (probably not proper Verobard, something much cheaper) that I often discard as I can't guarantee a good soldered joint on it now. 3. The days of chassis bashing to get a case that is designed for 0.1in board and connectors is past for me, I'm afraid. I've nowhere to put a 3D printer either, even if I could afford one. Anyway, the connectors don't fit the board! 4. At one time I was happy to use stripboard up to low RF frequencies. You hit problems at as low as 30MHz due to capacitance between strips. The same goes for breadboards except that they are even worse. Also SRBP used for normal stripboard is not RF friendly as its dielectric properties vary with temperature and humidity. You can't keep HF circuits stable over weeks/months/years. 5. A groundplane allows "leadless" ground connections, giving a low impedance ground system. There is far less likelihood of different parts of the circuit interacting with each other due to ground loops. If you mix low and high current grounds on stripboard you will often get all sorts of problems, particularly as the frequency goes up. You don't build power supply circuits on stripboard unless you are a masochist. 6. It's not just the "fuse" rating of the track, it's the volt drop along it. "Proper" Veroboard is rated to carry between 0.5 and 1A depending on allowable temperature rise and volt drop. Obviously volt drop varies with length. A PCB track 0.31mm wide in 1oz copper at 20C will carry 1A max. Signal tracks, carrying only a few uA, are limited to how thin the PCB manufacturer can etch them, not by copper width! A 1mm wide track will carry about 3A - 3 times the best you can get from a stripboard. 7. 50VA toroid? Those are quite light (0.65kg) but will make normal SRBP stripboard bend. You need extra supports or mount the transformer separately. They seem to be ok on fibreglass board though, even stripboard. ---------------- Regarding Pico circuits, most will probably work fine on SRBP stripboard. You *might* meet problems with HDMI outputs at the highest resolutions if the connections are long. Stripboard was never intended for those frquencies. You could even get an HDMI system that only gets max resolution in dry weather! You may also run into problems with high speed counting, where inter-strip capacitance will round off the waveshape and limit the maximum frequency. Driving MOSFETs, particularly largish ones, can be a pain with stripboard as the driver has to handle the strip capacitance as well as the MOSFET's gate, and that's bad enough. ------------------ Stripboard isn't "bad". You do need to bear in mind what it can do. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 4919 |
Sorry Stan, I hate strip board, since I typically end up wiring to the wrong lane... And... I am not as good as you in making it look nice. My wires always look clumsy. When, I use sea-of-holes boards, where I hide all the ugly wiring under the board, so it looks nice from the top. For some "must look nice" demo boards, I even stuk a piece of white adhesive paper to the top side before I pierced it with the legs while I placed the through hole components. So it looked like a nice PCB, but in fact was a mess of wires under the board. Volhout P.S. in the near future I will have to work with a "sea-of-pads" board, since SMT does not use holes. Benefit is that the other side of the board, always looks nice... a flat FR4 plate... Edited 2025-03-01 00:00 by Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2417 |
Thanks. I made pcbs in my 20's. I used transfers for dil pads and a "special" felt pen for drawing "seemed like/smelled like nail varnish/acetone" lines to other pads. Then drilling them with a tiny bit in a black and decker hammer action turned off diy drill. yes the bits snapped easy, it was hand held. I heard there was an alternative to Fe Cl. nasty stuff, what do you do with it after? an alternative is copy the circuit layout and take it to where they sell laser printers and ask for a demonstration then put the prints on clean copper pcb then iron it on, then etch and drill and clean. I never tried that. I'd prefer a "well designed" pcb over vero anyday. some pcbs from China are dangerous! I've had no trouble with pico hdmi on strip board but probably cos it's using the hdmi breakout board with inbuilt resistors... or it would be carp. dunno, never vero'ed it with resistors, still need hdmi breakout socket so why bother? vero for pico is ok'ish. it does work and a pico board fits. someone posted mmbasic is not recognised as a major programming language so other boards don't work (Peter). so what you gonna do? olimex 2040 board sort of works with a link but not complete. most compatible 3rd party board I found. what others work with mmbasic please for new commers without boards? |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7584 |
"some pcbs from China are dangerous!" :) Not where I get them from. JLCPCB is one of the biggest PCB manufacturers in the world. It's not a backstreet operation. They churn out thousands and thousands of boards every week. The prices on their boards below 100mm x 100mm are cheap because they pack small boards together to make one big one then send it through as one big board, cutting it up afterwards. The process is very highly automated. There's a youtube video of a trip round the factory. When you only want one board it's sometimes a tossup whether to grab some stripboard or do a PCB. The stripboard can be fine, but if I want something to fit into a case (and I like to design boards that *can* be enclosed even if I don't always put them in one) then a PCB usually wins hands down, even if I have to wait for it to arrive. Fixing holes are where I want them and components align with the panels. The cost difference isn't that great. It might have been me that mentioned MMBasic recently. It's a fact - commercial boards for the Pico are designed for C or python. Those are what Raspberry Pi support. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2417 |
true Mick. when will mmbasic be seen for what it is, good, but not main stream,pity,it's a nice system. I will take your from china seriously ... if I make pcb , thanks |
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| stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2417 |
true Mick. when will mmbasic be seen for what it is, good, but not main stream,pity,it's a nice system. I will take your from china seriously ... if I make pcb , thanks |
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| stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2417 |
when I said dangerous pcb.. see bigclive.com how not to do commercial pcb |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7584 |
Have you got a link please? I've not seen that one. (For Big Clive fans. The Ballad of Big Clive ) Edited 2025-03-01 05:45 by Mixtel90 Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2417 |
I meant there's a lot of bad pcbs. just cos it's a pcb don't necessarily mean blah. he exposes loads of dodgy gear from ikea and poundland.. not funny really :( |
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| Andy-g0poy Regular Member  Joined: 07/03/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 73 |
1. Stripboard is Imperial, so it's hardly surprising that metric components are an issue. 2 Tarnish on PCB - any board not just stripboard. Use a polishing block - designed for the job - takes only a few seconds. One of several options: https://www.rapidonline.com/seno-pc182-scrubbing-block-ultra-fine-non-metallic-polishing-compound-34-0295 3. Enclosures are a mechanical issue, you should,be able to cut the stripboard to fit, but drilling the mounting holes in the board may be a issue as the holes might not align up. a strip of plain PCB glued to the edge of the stripboard helps with this Sadly it seems that many people have a problem measuring things. I use a cad package to draw up the panel/box cutouts. I add punch dots to the centre of controls and the corners of cutouts. Print the design 1:1 lightly glue the paper on the box and then centre punch through the dots. That gives you the drilling points and the corners of any cutouts. Get a Anvil nibbler tool, https://www.rapidonline.com/anvil-av-nibt-nibbler-tool-86-2150 A bit expensive about 16 UKP and DO NOT USE IT ON STEEL you can break them. On alloy boxes and sheet they are fine. They make a lot of chips so work somewhere easy to clean up. 4 I've seen stripboard used upside down for RF work. Not something I would do I prefer to build on plain copper pCB for that. 5 That's what you have to put up with. 6 Current - better than a lot of PCB traces I've seen. Soldering extra wire to boost capacity is a method used on normal PCBs as well. 7. Load bearing - well it's usually only SRBP so not designed for such. Mount the board on the transformer instead :-) For Vero layouts, there are a couple of programs available that help https://www.experimental-engineering.co.uk/2011/10/03/stripboard-magic/ This is manual only so you have to place components and then do the track cutting. Very old Works on win95 and Xp, and apparently on Wine as well. This one looks interesting: https://veecad.com/ Available as local or web based, and looks like it tries to do some routing as well Times have moved on and we all have to put up with metric spacing, SMD chips and so on, so the used of various breakout boards is necessary. PCB transfers, I may have a few of those in a drawer somewhere. The PEN was usually a Dencon DLAO dark blue thick ink. A right pain to use until you found the trick of making a small, puddle of ink and then dip the nib into it. Later it was found that a Lumocolour pen works just as well. I've never tried it, but a Sharpie marker would also prob. work. I've never had much luck with toner transfer. But I do have a stock of release paper when I decide to give it another try. I use the dry-film system. The boards have the film stuck on then "Ironed" by passing them through a lamanitor. Strangely enough I wet the board and squeegee the film on then it lays flat. Expose to UV and develop with washing soda. You can get down to tracks widths of 10th with care when home brewing, 20th is easy. Using a B&D drill for 0.9 and 1mm drills only feeds the swear-box There are plenty of dremmel knock-offs that will do the drilling easily. Remember that fibreglass blunts drills quickly so learn how to sharpen small drills. The alternative to Ferric C I think is Copper Chloride or something like that. It's pretty much just as bad as Ferric and a bit of a pain to set up. People seem to be very anti Ferric, but it's been about for decades and works well. It never really goes-off just add some fresh solution to it and carry on using. I tend to filter out the gunk that builds up after etching a few boards. I also made a heated bubble tank and that makes things very easy. Disposing of Ferric is not a big problem, in the hobby area you won't be making huge numbers of boards anyway, so it's a long time between disposals. I know of three fairly easy methods. Some people say add a pile of bicarb to the old mix to neutralise it, then it can be flushed away. Another method is to pour the mix into a flat tray and let it evaporate. Knock out the residue and mix with some concrete and make a brick for the rockery.. The third method needs care - especially the ability not to swear at your Mum. Coming home from work (40+ years ago now) I was informed that there was a great big ants nest in the garden path, and that she had poured that bottle of brown gunk I left in the shed down the nest. -- That was a new mix as well only had a couple of boards on the clock! The ants never returned :-) I also use JLCPCB Excellent service, and makes it difficult at times to justify home brewing PCBs Andy |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7584 |
Stan: Clive's thing about PCBs seems to be about the *designs*, not the manufacture. Those are different things. A badly designed USB charger can be fatal no matter who makes the PCB or how it's made. The PCB manufacturer never checks the design for electrical safety, it has nothing to do with them. Any decent PCB design software will do automatic design rule checking. It checks the design for things like minimum hole size, minimum spacing between traces, minimum trace thickness. You enter these values into the program based on the PCB manufacturer that you are going to use. After the DRC test you have a pretty good idea that it will be possible to make your board. It's up to you though whether you cut a slot in the 3mm gap between the live mains connection and the 5V DC output! ----------------- Andy: Oh yes, there are all sorts of ways to get stripboard to work, even to work well. My point though is that to get a design that is "right" stripboard isn't the tool for the job. It is what it is, a way to simulate a PCB. It can never be used *instead of* a PCB though, it has too many limitations. I like it for temporary lash-ups that get thrown away after the job is done. You can rarely rescue anything from it apart from some of the larger components. I've seen some people re-use some imaginatively cut board a few times though! I've made a few of my own PCBs in the past. The most recent attempts used toner transfer, which was useless. I suspect some laser printers might be better than others for this. Having now got used to buying batches of 5 beautifully made 100mm x 100mm PCBs for less than £5 including VAT and postage I don't think I'll ever attempt it again. :) I even invested about £35 in a little table saw so I can cut a 100mm x 100mm into smaller boards relatively easily. As JLCPCB (like many other manufacturers) charge *per design* on a multi-design board that can save a lot of money. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2417 |
Mick. JLCPCB (like many other manufacturers), look good and you have had experience with them. what software or is it just gerber file? lots of free pcb design software, which? |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7584 |
Just gerbers. You just have a zip file of them and upload the zip. I use Sprint Layout 6.0, but it's not free. It's not a "full fat" PCB design package either, in that the PCB layout and the circuit diagram aren't linked in any way. I'd advise that if you are starting from scratch you get EasyEDA Pro (you can download it from the JLCPCB site - it's free). That does things properly. You draw the circuit then use that to at least partially design the layout. The two are linked and any changes to one update the other automatically. You can also get a bill of materials from it. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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