Prototyping

Boards

While working on the Ryobi Adapter, I learned a lot. Drawing circuits by hand is a pain, drilling them is worse. I want to get a laser printer and set up a small drillpress for the dremel soon, but until then I'm sticking to perfboard.

The perfboard is still tricky. Initially, the board made no sense, so I kept making mistakes. I ended up desoldering the whole first attempt. On the second attempt, I had one side as a negative bus and one side as a positive bus. That was better, but they tangential, not opposite sides. I only had braided wire which was kind of a pain to use. I need to get some 22-23 AWG solid core.

Searching for "prototype pcb", one board come up frequently. It has 2, 3 and 5 hole pads and two large buses, though the buses don't have holes. The board was 5x10cm and a pack of 10 is $3.89.

Artline Permanent marker is supposed to work.

Get some "tinned copper wire", it's what the part leads are made of. 100' 22 AWS ~$12.

This is beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHidhQZIUDY

Good article on toner transfer: http://hackaday.com/2016/09/12/take-your-pcbs-from-good-to-great-toner-transfer/

Enclosures

Available project boxes are pretty expensive for what you get. I like the idea of building them from hardboard - that stuff is really cheap and reasonably strong. It can be hard to work with, specifically fastening at a 90°. I saw some boxes that were wide and thin (think old-school luggage) and the large faces were made with hardboard and the sides were made with plywood. Another approach I'd like to try is simply gluing the box using cloth for the edges and corners. For a small enclosure, that should actually be quite strong. I can make the control face as the lid and have spring clips that hold it in place.

I could also try getting an aluminum sheet and cutting my own corner brackets. That with some larger washers could work really well.