What type of circuit board should I use for my projects?

[nshin31302]

Hello. I been interested in electronics for some time now, and I'm wondering what type of circuit board (PCB, pad-per hole perf board, breadboard layout perf board, strip board etc.) should I use for my projects. Most of the projects I'm interested in making are fly back drivers, Solid State Tesla Coil, and other high voltage stuff (using through hole components) . Please consider the price, the time needed to make the board, the reliability, the difficulty of making/assembling the circuit board, etc. your recommendation. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Rerouter]

as you want to work with high speed, high current, high voltage stuff, i would say blank dual sided copper pcb, a pad cutting tool, and working manhatten style,

A pad cutting tool in this day tends to translate to a ceramic core drill,

To give you some ideas what i mean, http://www.cliftonlaboratories.com/Prototyping.htm

[T3sl4co1l]

For getting started, pad-per-hole is good stuff.

You can get copper clad and cut out your own surface mount pads and traces with a utility blade, but that might be a more advanced technique.  You can also cut little chits of the stuff and solder those on as lightly elevated terminal points.

Tim

[Whales]

As Rerouter says, for HV stuff you probably want to have lots of air gaps around your components and lots of point-to-point wiring.  Common 2.54mm spaced pre-drilled veroboards are not a great idea here.  Ditto for solderless breadboards -- they're not typically safe for even mains (110/230V) voltages nor can they reliably handle large currents (ie above an amp or so). 

Nonetheless if you think you'll be making some LV circuits, I can make some veroboard suggestions for LV use:

• FR4 board material (fibreglass) as opposed to FR2 (phenolic, which stinks) or otherwise
• Pre-tinned rather than bare copper, because it makes soldering much easier (without the need to scrub before use)

Ebay sellers do cheap examples.  Just be wary that everyone slaps every word from breadboard to stripboard on their products to get more search hits, so everything will be labelled as everything. 

[ez24]

To give you some ideas what i mean, http://www.cliftonlaboratories.com/Prototyping.htm

informative link - thanks

[alsetalokin4017]

Illustrating some techniques:

(the last one is a ZVS oscillator flyback driver for use as the primary power supply for a hybrid SG-SS Tesla coil)

[codeboy2k]

@alsetalokin4017   Great job on those prototypes.. You've built those to last a long time!

Mine are often built in the air, lead to lead, and then end up as junk in the pile after a month or so...

[Aodhan145]

Cutting the traces out with a knife sounds time consuming and difficult. Why don't you just etch your pcbs. You can get them made with no effort in an half an hour easily.

[Rerouter]

that is why i recommended the core drill, you mount it in a reamer or similar handle, and can very very quickly make a new pad where you want it, this style of design is more for those that want to skip the layout stage via cad, and scribble up a crude layout on a sheet of paper, then make it fit as they go,

so 15 seconds tops for a new pad as you need it where you need it, as opposed to 30 minutes laying it out, and another 15 minutes etching it up, etc

I myself prefer to lay things out in cad, but when you need to prototype something quickly, with enough flexibility to add different order of magnitude parts (TO3 vs TO92), grabbing 2-3 blank sheets of copper that you have kicking around, cutting circular pads for junction nodes as you are laying things out, etc, can help speed it up considerably, and i would imagine is more for the realm of simpler analog circuits, (read that as not many components / node connection points)

[codeboy2k]

I'm going to try that core drill method.  It seems like it could be a speedy way to make nice boards, good enough to want to keep and show to your friends

Now, if only there was a hand-held laser etching pen that could be used to cut copper like a router bit