[sdiy] Building on Pad Per Hole?

[Colin Hinz]

On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 mab at cruzio.com wrote:

> Plain vanilla perf board is just FR-4 laminate material with
> typ. 0.042" holes drilled every 0.100". I've definitely seen
> some DIY projects built on this material. At various times,
> for example Radio Shack, here in the US, has offered this
> kind of prototype board.
>
> Other prototype board companies offer that same kind of board,
> but as an acutal PCB, with additional plating through the
> inside of the holes. It's just a PCB where the pattern is an
> array of pads, which are then drilled and then plated.
> These make for a nice soldering surface, and I've also seen
> DIY projects done with this material.
>
> Another form of this kind of pad-per-hole prototype board was
> also offered by Radio Shack, and this was pure copper pads on
> one or both sides of the board. These are less effective,
> because without plating, the copper easily oxidizes, and with
> out plating (e.g metalic deposition over copper) the pad can
> rather easily be burned off while soldering.
>
> I was just recommending plated pad-per-hole for new DIY
> enthusiasts, to save from some of the soldering and reliability
> hassles with the alternative solutions.

Well, the ultimate is the stuff with both plated-through pads
*plus* ground planes on both sides, such as this one:

http://www.vectorelect.com/Product/Circbord/106P180-4.htm

Of course, a chunk of this costs a fortune -- even though it's
pretty huge (10" x 18") it's still around $150 according to
Digi-Key.

For economy-class prototyping, I've had really good luck with
non-platethrough boards provided that they have the *square*
pads. That little extra pad surface area seems to make a huge
difference for pad adhesion, it seems. Vector has these, too:

http://www.vectorelect.com/Product/Circbord/8003.htm

Mind you, when you compare board area, this isn't a whole lot
cheaper than the "deluxe" version I mentioned above.

Mind you, it's all pretty academic to me -- some years ago, I
went to a garage sale and got a whole bunch of various sorts
of perfboard at (almost) criminally low prices. Some of it's
even Veroboard, and yes, I've got the special-purpose strip-
cutting tool too, which is surprisingly better than just
using a 1/8" drill bit in a hand chuck.

Does Veroboard still exist, BTW?

- Colin Hinz
  Toronto, Canada