How to move past the bread board

Thread Starter

remout

Joined Apr 18, 2011
14
I have a project that is a tachometer for a go kart motor. Now I need to go from bread board to something much more robust?

The project consists of an Arduino board connected to a Blue Smirf Gold via the bread board. The bread board also contains a few resistors, a couple of diodes, and 1 transistor. The inputs are a 9 volt battery connection and one wire carrying induced voltage from it being wrapped around a spark plug wire.

The board will be subjected to shock and vibration. My question is how to go from the bread board to the go kart and have it survive.

Thanks!
 

SgtWookie

Joined Jul 17, 2007
22,230
There are quite a few threads on here about making PCB's.
Bill_Marsden started this one:
http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/showthread.php?t=47681
Have a read through it.

Depending on the complexity of your board, you might go with Veroboard aka stripboard or other generic type of pre-drilled boards with pads.

You'll need to come up with a viable layout - but even before that, you should post your schematic, preferably in .png format, for people to have a look at it and make suggestions.
 

BillO

Joined Nov 24, 2008
999
+1 on the perf-boards.

I use them for my "beta prototypes" before going to PCB. The truth be told, a lot of them stay as perf-boards. I do point to pint wiring using #24 awg solid wire and use the 3 or 5 tie hole IC pad type boards that have the ground and Vcc busses between the tie pads.

If done right, this technique is quite robust. Vibration resistance can be enhanced by doping the wiring with silicone. To sum it up, it's a bit tedious, but cheap.

Here is a picture of a project that went through that stage. The board pictured is still in use after 3 years. It also uses some wire-wrap wire that is soldered in.

 

Attachments

marshallf3

Joined Jul 26, 2010
2,358
Never hurts to put a thick coating of marine grade silicone seal on the back of the board.
The only drawback is it takes about two days to cure to a fully non-conductive state.
Regular silicone seal isn't a wise choice as many brands never fully dry and remain partially conductive.
 
Top