Stripboard warning
 

I started a little prototype on stripboard this morning, (toneburst generator), and had tacked one leg of each of two sockets used. I started to finish soldering the other legs and noticed the stripboard hadn't been completely etched, causing tracks to be shorted. I've used stripboard for about 50 years and never seen this. I couldn't say who the supplier was as this piece has been in a drawer for years. I'm just glad I didn't get too far before I noticed!

Re: Stripboard warning
 

Good job you spotted the problem. The copper strips seem to be very close together compared with most I've seen. Not at all well made and something to watch out for.

Alan

Re: Stripboard warning
 

Looks like it has been milled rather than etched.

Peter

Re: Stripboard warning
 

I had some recently where the holes were all at the right pitch and diameter but not central on the copper strip. Couldn't use it.

John

Re: Stripboard warning
 

I think stripboard is normally machined rather than etched - certainly considerable variation in quality though.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

Yes, I had the same thing, across the power rails!

Re: Stripboard warning
 

I have some old stuff I have had for years that is pretty poor quality (board material and tracks). I have found that, over the years, the copper tarnishes or otherwise degrades too so soldering becomes more of a problem. Recent buys have been far better although I have noticed sometimes that the first hole at the beginning of a strip may be offset (I buy in long lengths and score and split).

Re: Stripboard warning
 

They sell some decent stuff at RS from Roth. It's properly etched, tinned and drilled on FR4 board.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

The best stripboard was always either 'Veroboard' or the RS Variety

Re: Stripboard warning
 

I have found this quite often on cheap boards from China, no surprise there, but then you get what you pay for! The other common problem is holes drilled out of line almost cutting tracks in two. The moral appears to be inspect thoroughly before starting assembly. I seem to average about a 40% yield but its still cost effective.

Orakle42

Re: Stripboard warning
 

Hi, I've also had this problem on custom, professional, PCB's for power supplies many years ago.
The raw board had been coated in low purity copper and had not etched evenly/ been properly inspected.
Known as "measles" in the trade, tiny copper spots and some conductivity across the laminate.

Ed

Re: Stripboard warning
 

After Vero's patent expired various ersatz versions were made, even Farnell sold them.
Some had hole misalignment with a very brittle srbp.
I bought a load of the blue fibreglass Vero at a rally which is perfect. Vero even made
a version with a ground plane on one side.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

I had some a few years ago from a local electronics shop, now defunct. It also had shorted strips, definitely an etched board as the copper shorts looked like a web that hadn't dissolved properly.

Some of the tinned, and expensive board sold by Farnell from a french manufacturer has the offset hole problem, it's been reported on the product review section by a user.

I'm pretty sure some of the electronics hobby suppliers used to sell a sanding block designed for bare copper veroboard. If I'm not using tinned stuff, I always go over it with some fine wet & dry first. Makes soldering so much easier.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

This is the stuff I buy which I mentioned earlier: https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/stripboards/5185932/

Very very good quality stuff. Typical output (audio filter I built):

Attachment 198732

I won't go back to the brown FR2 stuff now. It's horrid! Even the good stuff!

Re: Stripboard warning
 

A problem I have had twice is the rails not breaking completely when drilled. It is likely that I need to choose a different bit, but these two faults could not be seen, even with a magnifier. It was the meter that found it in the end.

I spent an hour building a mic pre-amp last night and 2 hours fault finding.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

Maplin sold something very similar for a time (FR4 substrate). It was lovely stuff, I bought all I could get my hands on!. Used a little bit this morning to mount a couple of header plugs to make an adapter. No problems.

Like you I'd not go back to SRBP stripboard having used this one.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

As I understand it, you're supposed to use the special hand cutting tool to break the tracks although I expect most of us have used a drill when the right tool wasn't to hand. As far as I remember, the cutting tool has a shallower profile which means you remove less of the substrate when cutting a track.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

the proper tool has a little pilot spike that goes through the hole. The one I bought from either cpc or rapid looks like a drill with a plastic handle.

Leaving a strand of copper is user error mind you, not the board's fault! ;D

Re: Stripboard warning
 

I don't use the official cutting tool or drill bits even though I own both. They are terribly unreliable. Better to nick out a section either side of a hole with a scalpel then buzz it out with a DMM.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

Not sure about that. The Vero "spot face cutters" I remember didn't but neither did they look like drill bits in a handle. The earlier ones looked a lot better but either type worked OK. The tool I had with the pilot pin would leave an isolated pad round the hole in strip board track but was ISTR intended for use on unetched single sided copperclad board with just a tenth inch grid of punched holes wherever you wanted an isolated pad to fix component legs to. Great stuff for breadboarding with a groundplane.

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Ii use to own a Canon inkjet printer and with the refill kits came a drill with a small handle to drill into the cartridge. I've repurposed these to cut tracks- just the right size.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

A chap at work has been using some of the old brown stuff to cobble together 'an idea'. No idea where he found it (WEEE skip?) but the language!

I've never heard the like :o

Mr B's would be the preferred choice, that and the stuff which just has pads, you then have to join the pads with tinned copper wire (et al). May suit some applications carrying a bit more oooomph.

Mark

Re: Stripboard warning
 

If I'm honest I rarely actually use the stripboard. Most of the ideas start on a solderless board if they are low frequency and end up on a custom PCB now they are so cheap. Anything which requires high frequency, high voltage or high current goes dead bug on plain FR4.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

I'm still a fan of stripboard: as well as the traditional Veroboard-type with copper strips all the way across, in times-past I built quite a few logic-circuits using TTL and a kind of FR4 board that had sets of 16-pin DIL outlines with the 'tracks' from each pin on each chip extending outwards for 3 or 4 holes. There was a kind of turret-tag that could be pushed into the holes, soldered on the underside, and then the bit that stuck through could take 4 or 5 wire-wraps.
It also had dedicated longitudinal power/ground rails. Even better there was a special kind of ceramic decoupling-capacitor presented as a flat strip with upstanding 'legs' at the same 16-pin DIL power-pin spacing - these were great because they could be fitted _underneath_ the DIL chips before you soldered the chips in place, providing decoupling directly at the power/ground pins.

I built a number of TTL/RS232/ECL interfaces for things like a 9-track 6250BPI high-speed tape-drive to a PDP11 using this sort of approach.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

Here is a closeup of the official Vero spot face cutter, part number 22-0239

Re: Stripboard warning
 

Hi Kevin, the blue handle is familiar but must confess I've never seen that type of tip.
I do have the yellow and orange ones (different sizes) that can be used to insert Vero pins into the holes.

Ed

Re: Stripboard warning
 

My spot-face cutter was like Kevin's, but without the spike.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

That's the later one I mentioned. The tip of the earlier type was more like a short straight fluted drill bit. The earlier one looked the part better but worked no better and probably cost a few pence more to manufacture.

Looked more like pic attached

Re: Stripboard warning
 

That's the one I have. A lot less harsher on the hand to use than a drill bit.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

Years ago Jetpac used to include a small drill for helping to refill printer cartridges. I've still got one of two and I find them ideal for cutting strip board ( co incidentally th stuff I've got was from Maplin). But I always check tracks with meter. Bit more time consuming, but it's worth it.
For cleaning the board prior to soldering , I use a sanding block for PCB ( EX MAPLIN) , and then a wipe over with flux ( soldering paste on tub).
When I find circuit works, I wash down with meths and a scrub from an old paintbrush ( Aldi vintage) gets rid of any excess.
often I've found that something ( possibly flux) causes green on the points where the wire is soldered on. Many sprays but I use car clear lacquer (mainly because I've got a tin handy from refurbishing cheapo door numbers).
I used to find that an easy way of inserting single sided pins ( i.e. ones designed to stick up from the board face to provide test / termination points ) was to push them in by hand and then use a soldering iron to push them home.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

One tip for veroboard (or indeed any copper laminate pcb) after cleaning off the tarnish is to spray it with hairspray. Preferably non-perfumed! Its a very light laquer that dissapears at soldering tempetatutes so acts as a sort of flux. And of course, someone at home may just have some you could "borrow" it does rub off but usually sticks around for a few weeks if youre experimenting, cleaning vero after youve soldered onto it is fiddly.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

I suspect that this apparent effect could vary from one brand to another, depending on the chemical make up of the product.

Silcones are a common component of hairsprays, e.g. methicone. If that breaks down on heating, it could leave a layer of silica on the copper, and that sounds like a risky way forward.

B

Re: Stripboard warning
 

Its a tip from a pretty old magazine from when i was st school in the 70s so perhaps you're right. That said about 3 years ago i used some really cheap hairspray from a poundshop on some PCB's I was making and had no problems. Perhaps nowadays it might be safer to use a flux spray if you have a non-corrosive one.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

My approach has always been to rub-down Veroboard/Verostrip and its clones with a genuine Brillo™ pad before use.

Then after doing the soldery-thing, de-flux in an ultrasonic bath and then stick it under an IR heater for a couple of hours to dry, followed by a spray on the solder-side with a commercial conformal-coating.

Why mess around with hairspray when proper conformal-coating sprays are cheap - and they can be soldered-through if you subsequently need to make circuit modifications.

Re: Stripboard warning
 

Conformal coating sprays have only been cheap in recent years. And you can't get it in Tesco or from your wife's bathroom shelf :)