I printed up my first circuit board, and everything came out well except that I made some of the connections too close to each other.

Note the connections on the right in the attached pic, where I need to solder power (bottom right) and a string of LEDs (top right). The problem is that those wires are stranded, so it's tough to get them through the hole. And once they're in and soldered, they break easily.

I need to build out a few of these (about 20), so was wondering if anyone had any advice so I could avoid making a mistake?

I was considering inserting non stranded short jumpers and connecting my wires to those. Or maybe there's a better way?

Thanks for any advice.

 

What is the diameter of the thru holes? Will a 0.025 square pin or smaller metric pin fit? If so, I would add the pins then then use female crimped sockets to connect. I have also soldered stranded wire to such holes and then used hot-melt as a strain relief to keep them from breaking so easily.

 

just twist the ends up on your stranded wire tightly, It will be fine.

 

You can also add stress relief to the stranded wire connections. I’ve used hot glue, but a flexible epoxy putty is perfect.

 

What gauge is the stranded wire? Is there any chance that you'll ever want to remove the connections?

 

Add some pins to the holes, then solder the wires to the pins. Next, slide a length of dual wall (glue lined) heat shrink tube over the lot and shrink it with a hot air gun. While it is still hot, give it a quick squeeze to drive some glue between the pins. That works well for me.

 

Heres what I do. You need the right size wire. You need about 24 ga wires for something that size. Strip it. Twist it and tin it with solder first. Let the solder melt into the strands cleanly. Use the iron to heat up the wire then add solder to the wire not the tip. I do a bunch of wires at a time as a separate process. Don’t do one wire then solder because soldering to the board will heat the board up and help each successive wire.

Then insert and solder into the hole. Don’t be scared to heat the hole up enough that solder flows around the thru holes. Unless you keep disturbing and bending the wire it should hold up pretty well.

 

Stranded wires tend to break off at the point the solder combine them into a single hard strand. I rather crimp on a Molex KK terminal, straighten the terminal and solder the terminal tip to the board: .