Make Electronics

Experiment 13: Broil an LED

116 Chapter 3

FundAmentAls

All about perforated board

For the remainder of this book, you’ll be using perforated

board whenever you want to create permanent, soldered

circuits. There are three ways to do this:

1. Point-to-point wiring. You use perforated board that
   has no connections behind the holes. Either the board
   has no copper traces on it at all, as in Figure 3-70, or
   you will find a little circular copper circle around each
   hole, as in Figure 3-71. These circles are not connected
   with each other and are used only to stabilize the com-
   ponents that you assemble.
   Point-to-point wiring allows you to place the com-
   ponents in a convenient, compact layout that can be
   very similar to a schematic. Under the board you bend
   the wires to link the components, and solder them
   together, adding extra lengths of wire if necessary. The
   advantage of this system is that it can be extremely
   compact. The disadvantage is that the layout can be
   confusing, leading to errors.

Figure 3-70

Figure 3-71. Either this type of perforated board or the type in Fig-

ure 3-70 can be used for point-to-point wiring in Experiment 14.

2. Breadboard-style wiring. Use perforated board that is
   printed with copper traces in exactly the same pattern
   as the conductors inside a breadboard. Once your
   circuit works on the breadboard, you move the com-
   ponents over to the perfboard one by one, maintain-
   ing their exact same positions relative to each other.
   You solder the “legs” of the components to the copper
   traces, which complete the circuit. Then you trim off
   the surplus wire. The advantage of this procedure is
   that it’s quick, requires very little planning, and mini-
   mizes the possibility for errors. The disadvantage is that
   it tends to waste space. A cheap example is shown in
   Figure 3-72.


3. You can etch your own circuit board with customized
   copper traces that link your components in a point-
   to-point layout. This is the most professional way to
   complete a project, but it requires more time, trouble,
   and equipment than is practical in this book.
   Point-to-point wiring is like working with alligator clips,
   on a much smaller scale. The first soldered project will
   use this procedure.

Figure 3-72. Perforated board etched with copper in variants of

a breadboard layout. This example is appropriate for Experi-

ment 15.