Overlay for vero/stripboard

Hey,

Just a quick question. I've got a fairly large design thats not overly complicated, so rather than getting a 14x20cm PCB manufactured (which will cost waaay too much) I'm going with ye olde stripboard and wirewrap wire. Cheap, and it will do the job as the reason the PCB is big is because of various displays/switches/pots.

Has anyone printed an overlay on stripboard? For such a large design I guess it would make sense to prevent any mistakes in track cutting or placement. It also means I could have legends on the board, for jumpers settings and pinouts.

I read somewhere that they used to do this back in the day, but I didn't find anything on google about it, which sirprises me....one could make stripboard/veroboard look half decent, perfect for one-off simple designs. I'll do it in eagle (I do all stripboard work in eagle, really easy) and see how it goes.

Hoping one of the old school techies knows something about this, and can recommend some materials for it.

Blueteeth.

hi blueteeth,
As an old techy, I cannot recall seeing the overlay you mention.
If I had, Iwould certainly have found it very useful. I can visualise what you mean, its a good idea.

Methods I have used in the past are printing components and 'dots' on a 0.1 inch pitch on semi-transparent paper and temporary fixing the paper to pcb, ripping it off when assembly is complete. You should be able to do something similar with your eagle program

Using 0.1inch squared paper to pre-layout the components.

You could at one time buy 'VERO' pre-printed paper sheets, with the track and holes in half tone grey.

I am sure that now I have posted this reply, someone will suggest a better solution.

Regards
EricG

Eric,

Thanks for your reply! I'm currently thinking of the best wasy to do it, a comprimise between simplicity, cost, and aesthetics. I recently emailed someone from a small 'radio kit' website..he always glues the design to the stripboard to make it easier to construct. I'll just take that a step further and seal it with laquer or something.

Good to hear someone else has done it, I'll just leave the paper on rather than ripping it off. As for 'designing' on paper, I've used plain paper with a grid drawn on with a ruler, graph paper, Eagle, and pure free hand...I don't feel the need for autorouting CAD progs. I don't know if its pure practice or just a way of thinking, but I took to stripboard very well, and can have a board from a schematic in under an hour..and many schematics seem to be perfect for it...I still don't know why some people shun it as a prototype medium, its cheap and cheerfull.

I'm gonna go to an art shop and pick up some lacquer, acrylic gloss spray, and various type of thick paper. I got plenty of stripboard, veroboards, and proto boards from ebay to experiment with, and a massive backlog of 'utility circuits' (like comparators, op-amps, logic etc..) to build. I am now convinced it CAN look like a professional PCB, the top side at least

Thanks

Blueteeth

hi blueteeth,
Seeing Sig's post/download, reminded me of another method for track overlays.

If you have a scanner you can place the pcb trackside down on the scanner and produce a 'reasonable' image, for printer or 'object' insertion into another program doc.

Its important if you are going to print the image as an overlay to get the printer scaling right.
Once you have the scale that suits, its a piece of cake!. [grey scale works fine]

If you have a digtal camera, with a macro option, you can produce images, which can be 'text' notated using your equivalent of Paint Shop.

Regards
Eric
Thanks Sig

Cheers Sig239, Eric,

I got ther pdf and printed a few sheets out, should come in handy for those 'quick and dirty jobs'. Thanks I'm stil trying to get 'Eagle to print out to scale, but its my fault for not having access to a printer (have to use portable document files) but the tests seems to be promising...nice silkscreen effect with pin numbers, poart names/values, and extra things on the PCB. In fact, once its sealed with a clear gloss (solder through laquer) it may look quite funky And of course, when I finally get a new Inkjet, colours are an option, any colour 'soldermask' and 'silkscreen'. (I put those in ' because they're just for looks, its all just paper )

I did a really quick design for a AVR mini dev board, real basic and not my best work, but its good for a test PCB, and its handy.

Cheers guys, I'll have to 'borrow' a friends digital camera for the results... hopefully in a week I'll have the lacquer and all the supplies for making 'stripboard/veroboard' prototypes look 'the nuts'.

Blueteeth

A while back there was a program called StripBoard Magic... But it seems to have been pulled.

However, Abacom in Germany have a product called LochMaster




I've used a different product, Sprint Layout 4.0, for my real pcb work, and can definately recommend them.

Hope this helps,

Shax said:

A while back there was a program called StripBoard Magic... But it seems to have been pulled.

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It was rubbish anyway! - the company seemed to go bust!.

However, Abacom in Germany have a product called LochMaster

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I use that, it's really nice!.

Only one BIG problem though, they don't (or at least didn't) take credit cards or Pay Pal, you had to send them a cheque in Euros - which is difficult and expensive. Eventually I remembered my boss has a Spanish bank account, so I gave him pounds cash and he gave me a Euros cheque.

I've just been on the Abacom website, and they do take PayPal..
They also offer a download option, which means you don't get stung for shipping, and you can play immediately..

Shax said:

I've just been on the Abacom website, and they do take PayPal..

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About time too!

They also offer a download option, which means you don't get stung for shipping, and you can play immediately..

Click to expand...

When I ordered, I ordered off the website (no download option back then) and I was surprised when it didn't ask for credit card details or some form of payment?. Anyway, a couple of days later two parcels dropped through the door, along with an invoice asking me to send them payment - so they send the products out, and waited for the payment.

Hey,

I've heard of 'stripboard magic' but it seemed a bit pointless, graph paper works for me, and its probably quicker..because I use SMT packages on stripboard as well. I'm fine with the 'design method', I was just asking if anyone had made a pseudo silk screen for stripboard, or any other generic prototyping PCB (vero?). Normally it wouldn't matter, but its always nice to have pinouts of connectors, labels for pots and switches, and labels for jumpers on a PCB, stripboard included. And the stripboard route is by far cheaper for one-off designs that are over 160x100mm.

I managed to get eagle to print the silkscreen to scale via PDF (real hassle) so now I'm just waiting for some acrylic conformal coating and glue. Did a simple design of an AVR protoboard...I've even named it

As I said, this is for convenience (for prototyping) and aesthetics rather than a design method, I'm just fed up of stripboard looking boring when its on display, I don't care when its in an enclosure, it could have slagetti jumper links a-plenty.

Sorry if it seemed I was starting another 'how do I do stripboard?' post.

Blueteeth.

Update!

Hi,

Just to finish off this topic, I finally got around to some tests. I used the silkscreen layer on Eagle and just glued it to a prototype board I got from ebay (basically tripad). I think it turned out ok after it was sealed to protect it.
Sorry for the bad picture, don't have a desk tripod or anything just a camera I 'borrowed' form a friend. This was just a test board, a simple AVR dev board that I spent literally 10 minutes designing, I just need something with a programming header and I/O ports to get me started on these. I even gave it a cheesy name, the 'X-AVieR'. (Copyrighted!)

I have a much larger design for a 'project board' (LCD's switches, pots etc..) on the way. I'll deffinately use this process to tidy it up, its so simple after all.

Thanks for the advice people.

Nice! What did you use to adhere the paper to the board? Are you concerned about the adhesive going through the holes and affecting the solder joints? I may have to give this a try!

Sig239 said:

Nice! What did you use to adhere the paper to the board? Are you concerned about the adhesive going through the holes and affecting the solder joints? I may have to give this a try!

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I used 3M's photo mount. Its expensive, sticky, and gets you proper high if you don't have lots of windows open (colours get a whole lot prettier ). As for the holes, the glue/paper does go through the hole, but because the board is full of holes, theres an easy reference to 'punch through' with a needle. Its almost like drilling, but you only have to go through paper/lacquer (or clear vinyl, which seemed the best). I did another board with random parts on it to test if soldering melted/burned anything, and it seems fine to me....even when I held to iron on so long the pads came off. that photo is a bit weird, the holes look messy, but they're covered up by the components anyway. heres another pic comparing the before/after.

One could print in colour, any soldermask/silkscreen colour they wanted. Its still just cheap stripboard/veroboard/tripad but adds a bit more aof a professional touch

Blueteeth

I'm using Mac OSX, and the stripboard demo from Lochmaster doesn't open after downloading! Any ideas? haven't used a stripboard ddesigner before.

I'm very impressed with that Blueteeth, it looks very neat indeed. If you don't mind I'm going to give this a try myself, and I'll be asking you if I get stuck!!!

Brian

Jules said:

I'm using Mac OSX, and the stripboard demo from Lochmaster doesn't open after downloading! Any ideas? haven't used a stripboard ddesigner before.

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Do they have a MAC version? - just checked, and they don't.