Mechanically mounting the Arduino UNO Board.

I’m converting an old Javelin Stamp development station into something I can use with Arduino board designs and like several others that have posted here find that physically mounting the board in a semi permanent fashion on another surface is somewhat difficult. Tolerances are tight!

However, I found that small plastic PCB standoff mounting posts I had purchased awhile back ended up working quite well. I thought I’d post some the details of this approach here in the hope that it might be useful to others also.

The posts I have require a 13/64 dia mounting hole in the main support surface, and the top 1/8” dia pedestal perfectly fits the four mounting holes in the UNO board. At both ends small plastic dog ears spring out to fix the post firmly in place once inserted into the mounting hole.

Because I was adding the Arduino board to an existing prototyping board with some circuitry already in place I didn’t want to take a chance damaging the existing board when drilling new mounting holes in it, so I used a small piece for Lexan clear plastic sheet as a sub mount and then used some stripped #24 solid telephone wire as “twisties” to fix the smaller sub mounting sheet to the 4x6 prototyping board using existing IC pin holes already provided in the protoboard. At some future date I should be able to simply cut the twisties, remove the sub mount, and re-use the prototyping board for something else.

The two photos below show how it works. One is of the Arduino board in place and in use. The other shows sub-mount and standoff posts in detail.

I hope you give this method a try if you have a similar situation. The standoff’s I used were purchased at a scrap sale, but I noticed that Jameco’s current pdf catalog has something similar on page 81. Also if you google “PCB Standoff Press Fit” you should obtain several pages listing potential suppliers. The one with adhesive base shown in the following link would be easier to mount that trying to accurately drill properly located mounting holes in the sub mount sheet: (http://www.richco-inc.com/products/circuit-board-hardware.html)

Good Luck if you give it a try!