Homebrew PCBs

Solder bridges can be made easier when the iron is set to a cooler  
temperature.
But still - if adjacent traces are nearer it ain't gonna work with solder.

The stranded wire thing works well, i usually take longer pieces and fold  
them over the edge of the board or something, the excess is cut off with a  
knife.
If you use any length of wire - make sure you tack it all down, otherwise  
someone might bend it shorting it to other traces.

ST


On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 15:16:02 +0100, lcdpublishing  
<lcdpublishing@...> wrote:

> This weekend I etched some boards with .010" wide traces with .010"
>
> wide spacing. After etching I found a couple of traces "broken" so I
>
> had to repair them and with these old eyes, it wasn't easy but I did
>
> get it.
>
>
> I tinned the board using solder paste (plumbers paste) as I have
>
> been doing.  I then extracted some strands of conductor from
>
> stranded wire and tinned that.
>
>
> To make the "jumper", I laid the strand against the trace, and
>
> pressed down with the soldering iron tip and it held.  It worked
>
> fine for all the breaks I had to fix.
>
>
> I did try to drag solder over the gaps to bridge them, but couldn't
>
> get that to work.  Further complicating it was the small traces and
>
> close proximity of the traces - I would end up shorting out several
>
> traces together.
>
>
> While not an ideal solution, it worked pretty good.
>
>
> As to the reason for the breaks in the traces - just being in too
>
> much of a hurry.  After doing the toner transfer, I inspected the
>
> boards very good and did notice the missing toner.  Knowing that the
>
> Sharpie pen is too blunt to patch the spot, I just went for the
>
> etching.  I really should have cleaned the boards and tried the
>
> transfer process again - it would have been much faster and easier.
>
>
> Chris