because I had a drawerful and wanted to use them
I know that feeling. You've bought a lot of something cos they were cheap if you purchased in bulk (when you only needed one) and now you're trying to use what you have.
Maybe in the near future, PCBs can be done at home without much chemicals just like laser printers. When I started turning in printed lab reports, I had to wait 20 minutes for my NEC dot matrix printer to print a few pages. Those days are gone.
Milled PCBs are the way to go - now to make a PCB miller.
PCBs can be milled really fast and accurately and with a hole of two for alignment, double sided PCBs can be done with relative ease too.
Perhaps something like a high speed RC motor (very small) with a custom chuck (or possibly commercially available chuck off a mini-drill or similar) could be used with some laser cut mounts and simple circuitry - could be a pretty epic mini milling machine for PCBs. Reprap type project. I know similar has been done before but it's never quite been cracked in an easy to make and customise cheap machine.
Fancy it? I hear kickstarter works well 
I don't think I will ever build a duemilanove or UNO into a project.
Nahh they're for prototyping. I like the initial idea but I really want to buy a big bag of chips and approriate hardware for making them run and just make a custom PCB for each project.
I like wirewrap because I can make each design match the parts I have on hand and slowly use up this stock of stuff that's been accumilating since 1980.
Thankfully my stuff's only been accumulating for a few years and I don't have enough yet!
This post should have been before the other one but I didn't notice it hadn't posted
Grumpy_Mike has a PCB milling machine, I don't have the time to duplicate it, nor likely the programming skills to go from gerbers or something to what the machine would need for milling directions. So wirewrap for now ...
Here is Grumpy_Mike's:
http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Hardware/CNC_Conversion.html
Yeah I've seen his - it's nice
mowcius - you should try wirewrapping at least once; it's main downfall is the fact that you need to buy a wirewrap tool (for small projects, a manual tool is fine; looks something like a larger jeweler's screwdriver), the wirewrap wire, plus the special wirewrap sockets/pins (they have square legs which are longer than regular thru-hole sockets - but they aren't cheap).
The way I've done it in the past has been to solder the sockets/pins in place where wanted on pad-per-hole prototyping PCB, then wire the circuit up. I haven't made many boards this way as its fairly tedious to do, and if you make any mistake, it can be difficult to correct depending on the number of layers of wire and where in the level stack the endpoints are (there are methodologies to how to wirewrap a board properly to prevent this from being a huge issue - but it will always be some kind of issue).
It's something to try at least once in your life, just to say you're familiar with it; while the downsides are there, on the upside (when properly done) you end up with a much stronger mechanical joint than you get with soldering (if that's a need). Just something to know for your bag of tools, I suppose.
crOsh, you do wirewrapping a big disservice!
It goes quick with a hand wrapper, which can be had for like $6 at Radio Shack.
Similarly, a 100' roll of 30 guage wire is not very much.
Individual sockets can be expensive, but buy socket strips like this
are much cheaper and offer lots of flexibiity. You can socket a promini with these easily - but you can't buy a standalone socket for one, its too wide.
Rework/design changes are much, much easier than trying to unravel multiple soldered wires on pins.
For an extreme example, consider these two schematics. I had the first one all wired up, driven by a MAX6921 SMD part (not available as a DIP) on a DIP adapter. It didn't work out, the chip didn't like 5V vs 3.3V, or not having a cooling pad on the bottom, or whatever. So I pulled out all the wiring to the socket and the 8 header strips that went off to the 7 segment displays, and rewired it as the second schematic with a MAX7221 in DIP socket. Everything worked much better that way. If I had done all that with soldering, it would have been one ugly mess. Wirewrapping came off nice & clean in relatively no time, and since regular multiplexing was used vs the oddball charlieplexing, it actually went back together very quickly.
If one is doing any besides a chip or two and couple of decoupling caps, wirewrapping is way easier to work with.
If you have to make 2-3 connections to a pin, wirewrap sockets are easier to work with also.
It's something to try at least once in your life, just to say you're familiar with it; while the downsides are there, on the upside (when properly done) you end up with a much stronger mechanical joint than you get with soldering (if that's a need). Just something to know for your bag of tools, I suppose.
Yeah I'll try it at some point probably
Here's another example - look at all the parts here & the number of connections made. This would have been a nightmare to solder up in my opinion.[/quote[
I'm no stranger to soldering lots of connections - as you can see from the second pic I posted up. But that couldn't be wirewrap as it's in a very limited space and not so much a prototype board.Your obsession with machined pin headers can't be cheap though
Solder is cheap...
CrossRoads,
I envy the size of your board! I can only do 100mm*80mm on my EAGLE lite version. So what is the principle of securing the wires with pins by wire wrapping? Will the wrapping ever get loose over time?
liudr:
CrossRoads,I envy the size of your board! I can only do 100mm*80mm on my EAGLE lite version. So what is the principle of securing the wires with pins by wire wrapping? Will the wrapping ever get loose over time?
I wouldn't say that board looks much larger than 100x80 and especially if you were doing double sided pro-fabbed you could fit that all onto a smaller board in EAGLE.
Perhaps you should learn KiCAD
mowcius:
liudr:
CrossRoads,I envy the size of your board! I can only do 100mm*80mm on my EAGLE lite version. So what is the principle of securing the wires with pins by wire wrapping? Will the wrapping ever get loose over time?
I wouldn't say that board looks much larger than 100x80 and especially if you were doing double sided pro-fabbed you could fit that all onto a smaller board in EAGLE.
Perhaps you should learn KiCAD
You're right. His board is about 4"X3", so 100mmX75mm maybe. But if I design something, I will have to put something everywhere since I know I will run out of space soon. Plus, he's using the third dimension with wires, which I barely can on a PCB.
I've tried KiCad but it takes differently than EAGLE. I'll have to re-do all my libraries then. I'll try it again sometime.
I'll have to re-do all my libraries then.
The great thing about KiCAD is that you can import any EAGLE libraries.
Liudr,
I generally build up on Velleman ecs1/2. That's what is pictured. $4 if you you shop around, or find other similar brands for less (with more dubious quality hole spacing (uneven) and pad quality - I've never had a pad lift with multiple soldering/unsolderings for example.) Futurlec sells inexpenive cards, I haven't trued theirs.
The ecs1/2 is 80x100mm, I like using that because that's what eagle will support, and expresspcb also I believe.
I have also used ecs1/h when I needed something quick and just cut it in half or into the size pieces I needed.
The picture below shows 6 pieces of ecs1/2, with cut-down ecs1/h filling the gap in the middle left & right.
Parts of the 2 small cards were incorporated with the standalone arduino to make the card above, which does not do the time & score lights, but just the score detect & Lights & sound creation, & drives a remote set of lights.
The wires wrap around the pine about 5 turns around a square post if you do it right, and they do not come off or get loose. You hold the wire as you start twirling the wrapper, and the wire goes on nice & tight. You have to physically unwrap it to get it off, it won't slide off if its not really loosened up first.
I wish I had a wrapped up board at home to take a better, closer picture.
I do mine manually, you can buy an expensive squeeze handle wrapper also, just gets in the way as far as I'm concerned tho.
CowJam and mowcius,
Your phi-connect kits were dropped off at the post office yesterday. Hopefully you will get them in a week's time. Thanks again for trying them. I've tested GLCD with 18" cable and the display is trouble free. Just stick with 40-wire 40-connection IDE cables. The 80-wire 40-connection ones are no good for this board.
Anyone else wants to try?
Its a pity this kit is no longer sold! Interest is there!