[sdiy] prototype boarding (help?) and homemade pcbs.

[René Schmitz]

Hi Ian, Cole and all,

> Nope, not just you.  :-)

So I'm in good company. :-)

> I always start by wiring up the "infrastructure", i.e., the power supply 
> distribution/ busses, ferrite beads, power to the chips and a few bypass 
> caps.

I regard beads and bypass caps as normal components that get placed as I 
move along. And I leave some room for power connectors and such things. 
If I use wires for power I do them afterwards. But on occasion I have 
also used self adhesive 1/4 inch copper tape (available in crafts 
stores, look out for stuff for makeing "tiffany" lamp skirts) for 
creating grounds and power busses. Then it made sense to do some layout 
of the tape beforehand.

> Yes, there are lots of ways to do this.  I'm somewhat hard-core 
> old-school about soldering -- never rely on solder for the conduction 
> path, meaning crimp all wires onto the components before soldering.  

Thats conventional wisdom, and I generally prefer not to rely on this. 
But tiny wires for connecting just two pads on an IC or so, tend to end 
up at my soldering iron. And I don't like to solder on bend over IC 
leads or resistor leads, because then you can't unsolder them easily.
If there is a wire leading somewhere else, its easy to make that cover 
two pads.

I bend two IC or socket pins (usually at the corners) though to keep the 
part in place, then solder some unbent pins, and then bend the bent pins 
back, and solder those. Similarly with resistors.

Cheers,
  René


-- 
uzs159 at uni-bonn.de
http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs159