Holey Circuit Boards!

Looks like it's still there:

Lots of hits here:

Futurlec has a basic selection at reasonable prices. They also carry stripboard-style boards, which are otherwise sometimes hard to find.

Jameco has a larger selection but they may be a bit more expensive.

Radio Shack was never a good place for parts, too expensive and too limited. The only thing it had going was that one could usually find a nearby store, Radio Shack expanded as old style electronic stores disappeared.

You should be able to get perfboard anywhere that you can get hobby electronic parts. That will likely be mailorder at this point except in major population centers, since most "electronic stores" now are distributors that really want to deal with businesses not hobbyists.

That said, you could simply use copper circuit board and buil up over the copper. The copper provides really good ground, not only is it a large surface but it's everywhere. The parts rise over that surface, and you just connect the parts with their leads, or at most some bits of wire. A lot easier to fix an error, or change things.

Michael

Interesting idea. What do you mean by 'build up'? glue insulated pads down? or just float things in the air by soldering their leads together??

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It never fails! I spent 20 minutes searching for it and all that turned up for me was copper clad boards. Oy!

Ron

You can...

Saw out islands in the copper, with an x-acto or a Dremel

Stick down and carve areas of kapton tape as insulators

Stick small pieces of copperclad on the big one

Stick things down with foam mounting tape

Stand parts in mid-air by soldering the groundable pins right to the copperclad, live-bug style. 22M resistors and bypass caps make nice standoffs, too.

Use chip adapters, like the Bellin things

You can do picosecond-fast, low-level, or RF stuff on copperclad.

ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/BB_fast.JPG

ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/BB_fast_lvds.JPG

ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/BreadBoards.jpg

ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/BreadBoards2.JPG

Unlike the nasty white plastic proto blocks, you can write comments on these and keep them forever.

John

They have them. Same as Radio Shack.

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Nice pics, I'll have to try soldering the BNC's right to the copper clad. I've just been putting them in place by soldering a bent over ground tab to the copper. That's nice 'cause I can stick an input/ output anywhere on the board. Your method takes a bit more thought before you start.

George H.

Don't solder the cheap polyethylene-insulator ones!

I really like SMBs. They are small, fast, easy to solder down, instant connect/disconnect.

You can also find buckets of connectorized (SMA, SMB, MCX) hardlines on ebay. They solder right to the copperclad and make a pretty good transition to a 50 ohm microstrip.

John

Soldering BNCs to copper clad works very well. If you have the ones with the square base (and four 2-56? mounting holes), simple solder one edge of the base to the copper clad at a right angle to the board. If you're using the round type intended for a 'D' hole, simply solder the flat to the board with the business end of the BNC hanging off the side of the board. It takes some heat but I've never melted the insulator.

I was in one of their stores last week.

Roughly one-half the store was for cell phones, I-pods, and video game accessories.

Glad to see they still had the D.I.Y. "blank circuit boards".

Andy

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Ohh, I like the square base idea! Then I don't even need to keep the connector at the edge of the board. I sometimes get rid of the ground tab and put a new piece of copper clad at right angles to the board with a 3/8" hole for the BNC... 'glueing' up pieces of copper clad with solder is great fun.

George H.