Hello All.
I'm new to building out circuits and needed a little direction. I'm currently building a humidity sensor using a esp8266. The question I have is I have a pcb that I need to solder traces on but I've seen it done many ways.. I've seen traces solder on the board using solid wire (not insulated) but not sure what wire to use and what gauge. I'm a noob doing this and I liked the idea of wire vs. using solder to make the traces. Any direction would be awesome. Thank you

 

Use ok wires or wire wrapping wire silver plated then you can solder it on almost any kind of PCB, the surface plastic of ok wires are more easier to destroy then the wire silver plated.

 

Welcome to AAC!

It would be helpful if you posted pictures of some of the techniques you're referring to so there's no ambiguity.

If you're going to use wire instead of solder bridging, why not just do point to point wiring:

I'm assuming the "solder traces" you referred to are using solder to bridge between "pad per hole" perf board. Except this uses a combination of wires and bridging.


For general wiring, I usually use solid silver plated #30 wire used for wire wrap. It's easy to handle and easy to strip using a wire wrapping tool. For higher current capacity, I use #24 solid wire from CAT5 cable.

If you're going to make more than one, laying out your own board may be less work. I did this one with toner transfer:

This board has a few issues; I was trying to find out how sloppy I could be with transfer and this board has an open between a trace and pad. I also missed the spot badly on a couple holes. It had been years since I'd made any boards and I was trying to remember how to get the "feel" for drilling.

The picture is from the component side. The copper side is visible because the board is thin FR4.

 

Thank you .. This was very helpful. No lets see if I can not burn down my house or fingers. Thanks again for the direction.

 

One other thing.

Even if you're going to hand wire, using a schematic editor that also has layout capability can help you optimize component placement; as do well drawn schematics.

 

I use boards like these:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/5pcs-6x8cm...-Circuit-Board-/172647808298?oid=321227340421​

... with point to point wiring. On the backside, I'll use pieces of leads snipped off of components to simplify bridging between holes.

You can see one of my builds in this project.