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Old 4th Jul 2018, 3:19 pm   #1
Al (astral highway)
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Default Best choices for perfboard wire?

This may seem an elementary question but I'm curious what people use as a preference for connections on perfboard.

I'm happy with the wire I use for heavy ground connections. I don't like PVC covered wire and I find Kynar covered wire fiddly and hard to strip.

I like Teflon coated wire for thicker connections, but when it comes to surface interconnections between IC's, I'm looking for something new thats easy to strip and good looking.

I used to use bits of the yellow and blue wire left on the pavement by telecoms engineers (it happens all the time where I live! but I've discovered the wire is quite brittle and can break without it being obvious (inside the insulation).

So all suggestions as well as sources welcome, please.

Thank you.
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Old 4th Jul 2018, 3:24 pm   #2
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

I mostly use wire from telephone cable, the stuff with 4 or 8 cores used for extension wiring. It strips easily and takes solder well. You often find lengths on skips, either stripped out of houses or ends of reels.

This is for general tinkering type construction though - I never try to make anything exotic.
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Old 4th Jul 2018, 3:31 pm   #3
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

I use Kynar wire for most of my stripboard/matrix board construction. I agree that it's fiddly to strip, so don't do that. I just solder through the insulation. With a hot iron and a little patience and practice, it's not hard to do and gives a neat finish. I do all the wiring on the copper side of the board, and use a scalpel to cut the wire after the solder joint. It's possible to do point-to-point-to-point without cutting the wire, too. Sometimes it's necessary to strip the wire, if it's got to go to a fiddly place or be added to an existing joint, for which I use a pair of sharp, miniature wire cutters held back-to-front (flat side towards the end of the wire).

I've been using this technique for at least 30 years (remember Maplin's 'Tripad board'?) and haven't had problems with it falling apart.

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Old 4th Jul 2018, 4:08 pm   #4
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

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Originally Posted by cmjones01 View Post
I use Kynar wire for most of my stripboard/matrix board construction. I agree that it's fiddly to strip, so don't do that. I just solder through the insulation. With a hot iron and a little patience and practice, it's not hard to do and gives a neat finish.
Hey Chris, so that's how to do it! I didn't realise we could just solder through it. That's brilliant as I can see how to get the desired tension in the wire for good looks.

Quote:
I've been using this technique for at least 30 years (remember Maplin's 'Tripad board'?) and haven't had problems with it falling apart.
Ahah! yes!

Thanks again, Chris.
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Old 4th Jul 2018, 7:15 pm   #5
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

I use kynar. You can strip it easily with a pair of decent needle point tweezers and route it.

Not sure i fancy the idea of melting it. Sounds like it might eat my iron tips.

You can use enamelled wire too. Excellent video here on doing it with SMD:

https://youtu.be/i5MNLTc7YhY

I have tried this and it’s quite easy despite looking difficult
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Old 4th Jul 2018, 7:25 pm   #6
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

I just use single strand insulated tinned copped wire, and have a reel with about 100 metres on it, so it will last me a while. For short links, one track to the next one, I just use the same wire but stripped of it's PVC sleeve. I guess the gauge is about 0.5mm. Has worked well for me over the years. I sometimes just run excess solder to link adjacent tracks but I always feel this is a bit messy, unless you are trying to increase the current capacity of the strips. I also use single strand stripped wire to create pseudo PCB's with the plain type of perfboard, to link the components up. This is useful for RF work, when the inter track capacitance can be a problem.
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Old 4th Jul 2018, 7:40 pm   #7
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

I sometimes had to knock together small circuits on perfboard at work. Somehow I could arrange to have the components I needed, soldering iron and solder, pliers and cutters, even a drill bit to cut the copper tracks, but never any plain wire for bridging across. I took to using the offcut leads from the axial resistors and capacitors (I rarely had to bridge more than a few tracks) and the habit has stuck. Now when I clip R & C leads short I drop the offcuts into a rack drawer and pull them out when required.

They're not insulated, of course, nor do they always match. So the look isn't all that professional. But if I wanted a pro look I probably wouldn't be using perfboard in any case.

Cheers,

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Old 4th Jul 2018, 8:44 pm   #8
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

I like half millimetre OD (25SWG)tinned copper wire pulled dead straight. If it needs to be insulated, slip on some 24SWG ID PTFE sleeving. For thicker links, cut off bits of resistor leg are good too.

PVC sleeving from stripped wire can also be used if you're quick on the solder.

You can also get prestripped and formed solid wire insulated links for prototyping blocks in multiples of 0.1" insulated bit lengths.
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Old 5th Jul 2018, 5:55 pm   #9
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

Thanks all,

These are great workarounds. I like aspects of all of them and have tried variants, except directly soldering kynar wire without stripping it. I hate it when PVC sleeving degrades under heat...

Cheers!
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Old 5th Jul 2018, 6:00 pm   #10
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

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You can use enamelled wire too. Excellent video here on doing it with SMD:

https://youtu.be/i5MNLTc7YhY

Woah, love it for SOIC packages! What's the wire-dispensing tool called? any idea of a source? It looks great as tension can easily be got right and it's less fiddly than pre-cutting and placing with tweezers...
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Old 5th Jul 2018, 7:22 pm   #11
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

You can get an official version of it called a “road runner wiring pencil”. However I used a discarded (by the kids) rotring tikky mechanical pencil with the guts removed and a small spool holder on the top made from a bent coat hanger top and a spool stolen off the sewing machine. I used the machine to spool the wire off a drum of it I bought.

Annoyingly I don’t have this now despite only making it 6 months ago. It has disappeared during the recent rebuilding of my work area. Worked very well.

I’ll post a board I have done with this in another thread at some point. I have an AVR, ADC, voltage ref, buck converter and log power sensor on the board. All SMD. A lot cheaper than TH parts! I got a PCB made in the end for it but it was a nice prototype method.

You must have a high end temperature controlled iron to get the most out of this. I found a weller tcp even a bit troublesome for SMD parts.
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Old 5th Jul 2018, 7:30 pm   #12
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

I have (and use) a Road Runner wiring tool a lot. Never bothered with the comb guides you were supposed to use, just routed the wire between the IC pins.

There was a similar idea made by Vero, but it was nowhere near as good. With both tools you were supposed to twist the wire round the pins, cut it off and then solder it. I found that was very hard to do, to get the wire to stay on the pin. The Road Runner tool has a metal tip, so you can solder the wire close to that tip. In other words, tin the end of the wire just coming out of the tool, solder it to the first pin, route it to the next pin and solder it there, and so on, then finally cut the wire off from the tool. The Vero one was all-plastic and tended to melt if you used it like that.

I found a #8 Weller TCP tip was needed to melt the insulation on the wire. A #7 didn't quite do it.

On a ground-planed board you could run circuits built with that system quite fast. I built transputer boards and boards of 74Fxxx chips for my Ph.D. work using it.
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Old 5th Jul 2018, 7:59 pm   #13
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

I rather liked the idea of the road runner when I was a student as well. Unfortunately they made us slave in front of stripboard or easytrax and I wasn’t going to spend my own money on it

I was using TCP #7 tips as well. Changing tips on the TCP is a pain especially with the new PT ones so I dumped it recently and got a metcal. Was a good investment.
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Old 5th Jul 2018, 9:33 pm   #14
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

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Originally Posted by MrBungle View Post
You can get an official version of it called a “road runner wiring pencil”.
Thanks, I'll get one!

Quote:
Originally Posted by MrBungle View Post
I’ll post a board I have done with this in another thread at some point. I have an AVR, ADC, voltage ref, buck converter and log power sensor on the board. All SMD. A lot cheaper than TH parts! I got a PCB made in the end for it but it was a nice prototype method.
Nice work, I'm looking forward to seeing that post!

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You must have a high end temperature controlled iron to get the most out of this. I found a weller tcp even a bit troublesome for SMD parts.
No worries there. I have a nice temperature preset iron with swappable bits that I run typically at 365C for this kind of work, seems to be the sweet spot.
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Old 8th Jul 2018, 3:19 pm   #15
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

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This may seem an elementary question but I'm curious what people use as a preference for connections on perfboard.
Actually it is a tricky question and a very good question. The challenges increase with the number of connections.

See photos attached.

I use bare 26awg Tefzel or kynar for the non insulated interconnects that are soldered to the pads (typically plated through hole) to create as much of the circuit as possible. Its easy to strip off the insulation in 5 or 6 cm lengths at a time.

For main bus/power wiring I use 0.5mm or 0.7mm tinned copper.

For the insulated interconnects you have to be very careful what size of tefzel wire you select or it could get quickly out of control if there are a large number of links.

The attached photo shows a digital pcb I wired with 30 awg Tefzel. Even with that thickness you can see from the oblique photo view that the multiple interconnects, when bundled into micro-looms and laced with silk thread, still came to a substantial thickness or height.

It really has to be like this if the myriad of connections (over 900 in this case) were to remain orderly. If this is not done you end up with a rats nest. Its all about order and maintaining access to the connections.

However, if there are less total connections for the insulated interconnects, its better to use the 26awg Tefzel, not the 30awg.

We have talked about the methods in the past to strip the insulation at each wire end prior to soldering. Melting off the insulation is messy with irregularities and the insulation, either Tefzel or Kynar, doesn't retract well with heating either.

I have done a lot of wire wrapping too, but I'm not as fond of it as the soldered connections.
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Old 8th Jul 2018, 3:30 pm   #16
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

Very neat work. Much better than mine

Here’s a similar one I did the other day. It’s the only board that isn’t inside something.. This is the first couple of stages of frequency divider chain on a PLL using two HC390’s. Ran out of IC sockets though until tuesday’s RS delivery.

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I use yellow kynar for signals as it shows up better than anything else. RS PN 209-4798. Bus wires are stripped 22 AWG RS PN 121-4279. Boards are cheap chinese ones. You can get a box of 32 of them for just over a tenner on amazon. They are plated through and solder masked and have M2.5/M3 holes in the corners.

Haven’t found my SMD prototype board yet. It was in the cupboard in the unfinished projects box.
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Old 8th Jul 2018, 4:39 pm   #17
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

Quote:
Originally Posted by astral highway View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by cmjones01 View Post
I use Kynar wire for most of my stripboard/matrix board construction. I agree that it's fiddly to strip, so don't do that. I just solder through the insulation. With a hot iron and a little patience and practice, it's not hard to do and gives a neat finish.
Hey Chris, so that's how to do it! I didn't realise we could just solder through it. That's brilliant as I can see how to get the desired tension in the wire for good looks.
I spent decades trying to neatly strip Kynar until about 5 years ago a Production guy at the place I was working showed me the "solder through" technique - Doh !!!
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Old 12th Jul 2018, 10:20 am   #18
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Default Re: Best choices for perfboard wire?

Hey Hugo,

That’s outstandingly neat work and also shows what dense and intricate arrangements can be achieved!

Mr Bungle: good call on using yellow Kynar for signal routing, I might copy that one.

Chris; hah! I also didn’t know until recently that Kynar was designed to be soldered through !
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Old 12th Jul 2018, 12:17 pm   #19
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Chris; hah! I also didn’t know until recently that Kynar was designed to be soldered through !
I'm not sure that it is, but that doesn't stop me doing it! Incidentally, I'm also a fan of using solder-through polyurethane-insulated 'enamelled' wire for finer work. I use it often for surface-mount prototyping and mods. I have a couple of little reels which I think were intended to go on one of those 'Road Runner' or 'Speedwire' pens which MrBungle and TonyDuell mentioned. Soldering through it is really easy, but you do have to be careful not to nudge any of the resulting wiring with the iron accidentally...

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Old 13th Jul 2018, 12:02 am   #20
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Hey Hugo,

That’s outstandingly neat work and also shows what dense and intricate arrangements can be achieved!
Thanks Al. Also if you look at the photo of the board top you will see an item clipped on one of the IC's . This is an LED logic probe. They were popular back in the 70's. But the one you see there is hand made (by me) from a modified IC test clip with small board sections & surface mount resistors and surface mount LED's added. They are fun to make and use.

Hugo.
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