I am making a nice board. I will have a dozen or so 30 gauge wires that need to go to ground, and about the same number that will need to go to the voltage to be used by the board as Vcc. What is a good way to do this? I see something called 'bus wire' online that can be connected to perfboard, but I've never used it and don't know how well it works.

Thank you

 

Bus wire is just what you need. It's bare wire that is tinned, which makes it easy to solder to. You can run pieces of bus wire as power "rails", and run your small gauge wires to the bus.

 

Some perfboards have continuous strips of traces on the board to be used for power and ground bus purposes.

 

Don't forget your decoupling capacitors. I use the capacitor leads to wire heavier gauge supply and drain from cap to cap, with your lighter gauge device connections being short and direct to thier respective cap.

 

"Bus wire" is just a single conductor wire, as opposed to several smaller strands twisted under insulation. I believe it is usually uninsulated to be called "bus wire."

It is what I use to make power traces to my ICs. For most things I use #26 AWG solid wire.

 

Don't forget your decoupling capacitors. I use the capacitor leads to wire heavier gauge supply and drain from cap to cap, with your lighter gauge device connections being short and direct to thier respective cap.

These are all CMOS chips going to the rails. My plans was to put a capacitor between the rails, and also use a voltage regulator with its recommended 2 capacitors where the rails will interface to the outside world. Good?

 

Is there a specific technique that works best to hook the bus wire to the board?

 

These are all CMOS chips going to the rails. My plans was to put a capacitor between the rails, and also use a voltage regulator with its recommended 2 capacitors where the rails will interface to the outside world. Good?

Depends on the functionality of your circuits, but decouplers sprinkled liberally around and physically close to your device is in my experience, a good habit.

 

Here's a related question. On the same board I have 30 gauge wires, there will be 32 of them, that need to interface with other things. For now the thing they will need to interface with is my breadboard. So I am looking for some sort of permanent fixture that I can use on the board, that will have a clip or something so I can hook wires from my breadboard to these...

Thank you

 

Is there a specific technique that works best to hook the bus wire to the board?

It depends on the layout of your components but if you're using perf board (no copper) or pad-per-hole prototyping board, you can weave the bus wire up and down through the holes to create power and ground buses.

 

Here's a related question. On the same board I have 30 gauge wires, there will be 32 of them, that need to interface with other things. For now the thing they will need to interface with is my breadboard. So I am looking for some sort of permanent fixture that I can use on the board, that will have a clip or something so I can hook wires from my breadboard to these...

Thank you

You can use a pin header or separate test point pins or you can just solder in an inverted U-shaped piece of thick bus wire to two holes.

 

It depends on the layout of your components but if you're using perf board (no copper) or pad-per-hole prototyping board, you can weave the bus wire up and down through the holes to create power and ground buses.

I think the bus wire would be too thick

 

You need to choose a size of bus wire that will fit through the holes on your board you know. ;-D I usually use 22 AWG since I have a lot of it for breadboarding anyway.

 

Thank you all for the help!