odd equip. question

[StratDudeDan]

okay, the green board, wafer like stuff that you usually see as a "motherboard" or something like that. basically, the piece of whatever that everything is connected to.

what is it called?

where do i get it?

can i just make it instead?

[nonamemx]

Yeah, you can make your own.

Plastic, Foil, Glue, and an X-acto knife.

www.radioshack.com has them. They aren't green, but essentially what your looking for.

[Brian]

I think the old term was bread board

[lovekraft]

It's called a printed circuit or PC board if it has copper traces on the surface that the components are soldered to. If it simply has terminals attached to it, it's called a tagboard, or sometimes an eyelet board (if it has eyelets through its surface, like the old Fender amp boards) or a turret board (if it has upright terminals, or "turrets"). The board itself is usually phenolic or FRP. Printed circuit boards are made by etching and drilling a copper-clad board, usually using a negative and a photo-sensitive mask to protect the areas that don't need to be removed, but for DIY, a Press-N-Peel system has been developed that involves printing a pattern on special paper and using heat to transfer the pattern to the board, like an iron-on decal. Check this link for a photo essay on making a pc board, or get RG Keen's book for everything you need to know about designing and making high quality pc boards.

[jefm]

The ones in PC's are usually several layers.....

If you're looking to do it the copper plated fiberglass boards are better (especially dual sided)....you have to etch them which is a pain...

[soapbarstrat]

regular plastic won't work. I found that out 15 years ago when I built a metronome. Then I just took the PC board out of an old junk radio and sanded all the copper trace stuff off one side, and used that. It worked fine. You need a really small drill bit to drill the holes for your parts to go in, then you can just connect it all with wire on one side (will look like martian spagetti if you don't plan ahead so the job looks neat). They also sell it full of holes, plus they have these metal things that you can press into the holes, which makes it kind of like a terminal strip set-up. You don't have to use those metal things. But the thing with drilling your own holes is that if the holes are too big, your parts will flop around. too tight and the leads won't go through.

I like terminal strips better for making amps.

That green fiberglass PC board stuff.... if you laminate 2 pieces together to make it 1/8" thick, it actually seems to be a pretty good material for guitar string nuts.

[Jehle]

You can also order printed circuit boards on line. Where was that... Alberta Circuits in Canada does a good job.

For my one off projects, I use perf-board, also at the Radio Hut. To avoid the "martian speghetti" look, keep your vertical traces on one side and the horizontal traces on the opposite side. It takes a bit of "sewing" with wire, but the result is fairly sturdy. No chemical mess either.

[jefm]

Awww...but I like martian spagheti...it goes good with capacitor balls and semiconductor sauce