Noob - moving a circuit from breadboard to PCB

[jdeleonardis]

Hello!

I have lurked here on this site for a long time (two years I think! ) and I have finally decided to get an account because I have a lighting question that I need help with! Ive been researching a lot, both here, as well as other sites, and maybe Im just dense...

First of all, I know SQUAT about electronics, but I have figured out several things over the past few days such as serial/parallel circuits, breadboarding, etc. I have purchased a breadboard, several cheap leds, some resistors, yada yada, and I very proud to say that I have managed to get a parallel circuit with 6 leds to light up!

Anyway, I have a couple questions - one of which leads to the other. First of all, the breadboard I have is a little one (thats what all the ladies say! ), and I have figured out that the leds can only be placed along the center line (sorry, not sure of the name) with all the wires, resistors, etc arranged around that. Why is that? Is it because of the way the breadboard is built? Am I missing something?

Second, when Im ready to take the leap to move some lights to a more permanent spot - inside a model - and use a PC Board, should I be using something like this http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/p ... ber=G16638 ? And, assuming I have the circuit, power supply, etc, set up right, have everything soldered right, does it matter where everything goes?

Phew - that was an epic. Anyway, thanks for looking, and I look forward to being a little less shy (Im really looking forward to the results of the BSG contest!)

[kitty]

breadboards come in all sizes and sorts.
The bigger ones are designed in such a way that you can stick in a chip in DIL package (two center lines horiizontaly
these center lines have connectors that are connected to more holes located verticaly
The reason for that is that you can connect more than 1 wire to a component that way without having to solder anything
If you have only 1 connector you would not be able to connect more than 1 wire to a component's lead.
So they designed those boards so you have several holes to put wires or component leads in that are connected inside.
There also are even complex boards that can hold chips that have their pins layout in a square and those holes are connected to more holes in the direction of the edge.

The prototype boards (we call them expirimental boards over here) only have holes and islands around them so you can solder pins, brackets and leads in.
Then you make the connections by soldering wires to connect them as needed.

Next step would be to design a layout that has the wirings already on the board, or at least as many of them as possible , to minimize the spaghetti when you have a more complex circuit.
That layout then is etched or milled in a board with a copper layer.
You could do that yourself or outsource it to a company that makes pcb's.

At some point you'll be able to envision your circuit design on a prototype board and have aquired the skills to solder neatly.
Then you probably won't use those breadboards anymore but set up the circuit on a prototype board directly.

You might want to look up a prgramm called Eagle, you can get a limited demo version for free.
It allows you to input a circuit schematic and then change to a PCB autorouter that will allow you to put representations of components with their pin layout on the screen, change their position, rotate them and automaticaly have the program calculate where to put the copper tracks for a 1 or 2 layer PCB.

[jdeleonardis]

THanks for the well thought out response Kitty. Sounds like Im going in the right direction...I just need practice now.