How to make solder stick to "predrilled fiberglass board"

names snipped to protect the innocent:

these are in fact copper tracks. They may also be tinned. In high current supplies you may also find tracks soldered full length to increase ampacity.

he made my day :)

Solder wont stick to bare board. It will stick to copper or tin.

NT

Forgive the stupid question, but you're not trying to make solder stick to a bare epoxy board, are you? Humble apologies in advance :)

If that's not the case, and there are solder pads on the board, there is or was an issue with old electronic components that become unsolderable due to formation of oxide. I would emery the pads.

Link to a photo.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

I am trying to solder something to a predrilled board (part of my IGBT inverter project, I am trying to redo things more neatly).

I look at commercial boards and see beautiful solder traces, very well adhering to the boards.

My current issue is that it is not happening for me. The soolder refuses to stick to the board. Any suggestions?

I am trying to do just that, perhaps naively. This component will be fine even if solder does not stick to epoxy, but it would have been nice if it did.

I have used strips of copper, cut from copper roofing flashing, and glued to the board with contact cement when I needed some high current traces. There is adhesive backed copper foil that might work, but I have not tried it. I think they use it in making stained glass windows.

Ed

On Mon, 26 Dec 2005 21:40:04 -0800 in sci.electronics.design, Tim Wescott wrote,

For single-sided boards I enthusiastically recommend the toner transfer system as described by Tom Gootee at

Thanks. I bought some manuals from him a year ago. He is a great guy. The lage looks interesting.

I am done with my soldering and I made something that, I hope, will work fine. It just does not look as neat as PCBs.

I think that next time, I will order and use little copper washers on the back side.

Thanks Ken.

Looks very nice. I will use something like that the next time.

You want something like these to start with (I don't recall what country you're in so here's a selection): RS Components Cat.

I can't find my US links for some reason, but if you take a look at these and similar products you'll get an idea of the search terms to use locally.

These prototyping boards will allow you to mount the components and solder to copper traces; you then cut and link tracks as appropriate to make up your circuit.

They're a good way of hashing up a neat looking circuit before going tot he trouble of making a 'proper' pcb.

Cheers.

Ken

First, you need the right kind of glue (liquid glue for liquid solder comes to mind).

Joke aside, the PCB material (fiberglass, most likely in your case) surfece is treated to make it rough (called "tooth"), and then copper is plated on the surface. Anyone can buy PCB material with one or both sides having copper, and specify the thickness in "ounces". There are many processes that can be used to cover copper areas that are to be protected, and a few others used to etch the exposed copper off. Holes may be drilled before or after etching. Solder mask may or may not be screened on the board. Parts are placed and soldered. You are looking at the result of these processes.

Solder bonds by alloying with the base metal. Bare epoxy board, of course, won't alloy.

For low power circuits, take a look at

I also saw a website once where the author meticulously bonded component leads and buss wire to the protoboard grid, essentially laying out a single-sided board on the .10 grid as he worked. This was a pad-per-hole board, not bare. Soldering to the intermediate pads kept the leads from wandering onto adjacent "traces". It's a bit tedious, but workable if you do some preliminary layout. Cadsoft's Eagle works well enough for this.

Your best bet with a bare board is to just run the component leads together and solder them on the backside. Again, some preliminary layout work will help immensely.

(It isn't a huge leap to etch your own board after having laid out the circuit. Something to consider.)

Very nice suggestions. Thanks!

igor

I second that!

T> On Mon, 26 Dec 2005 21:40:04 -0800 in sci.electronics.design, Tim