Paper as a Substrate for Circuits | Hacker News Reader

Paper as a Substrate for Circuits

bunniestudios.com

84 pointsrobin_reala18 comments

They missed the single biggest advantage of a breadboard: tinkering. You can cobble a circuit together with no plan at all, trying things out until it works. It's ideal for rapid prototyping, especially for students. With most other systems you lose a ton of work with each change.

The high parasitic capacitance of solderless breadboard makes it unusable above about 10MHz. You also have to deal with unpredictable contact resistance. PTH ICs are increasingly hard to find. Breadboard is fine for basic classroom experiments, but practically useless for most prototyping applications.

Electronics hobbyists would be well-advised to learn SPICE as quickly as possible - breadboards are an endless source of frustration once you move beyond the basics.

> The high parasitic capacitance of solderless breadboard makes it unusable above about 10MHz. You also have to deal with unpredictable contact resistance.

Most of which really isn't a problem with digital circuitry and microcontrollers because most of the peripherals are on board and your communication buses are all low speed (most <1MHz--USB being the exception).

The biggest issue with modern circuits is that even your low-speed clock lines need to have series termination resistors--even at low speed--even on a PCB. This is a weird artifact for an amateur to grasp.

The issue is that even the cheapest digital chips nowadays have super high-performance transistors on their I/O. Consequently, a 10 cent microcontroller can respond to a 1GHz signal bounce or reflection on a 100KHz clock line. And, oddly, an FR-4 board makes this worse, not better than a solderless breadboard.

Agreed. I love using a breadboard to figure out my designs, even if half the components on it are SMD chips soldered to breakout boards.

But once the design is figured out, I just go ahead and make the real PCB. Its a lot sturdier, and today is quite affordable and accessible to anyone able to figure out EDA software.

Cute. Makes sense especially for RF prototyping. But a 60W power supply? Too high power. There's a reason for Fire Resistant 4 board stock.

This has the look of something that works well only for people with really good skills at working with tweezers at tiny scale. Many YouTube videos of people doing surface mount work are like that.

I've personally tried this using cooper tape when I had to make a quick SMD prototype.

Having the ability to take notes on your circuit is fantastic.

I have built a few antennas out of it. Works quite well for prototyping.

When I was taught basic electronics in the early 80's we prototyped on cardboard by pushing in thumbtacks as connecting points then soldering the through hole components and bare, solid core copper wire onto the thumbtacks.

The solid core wire was quick thick and could be bent into rigid paths before soldering so there was little risk of shorting if you were careful. A few dabs of hot glue could be useful sometimes to keep close wires separate.

I wonder if you could do something similar today with smaller specifically designed tacks to replicate modern SMT solder pads. You'd need some good magnification to place the tacks.

They didn't mention conductive ink?

https://www.bareconductive.com/make/5-things-you-can-do-with...

The problem with this whole article is an assumption of soldering with a second assumption of the presence of a microscope.

The lack of soldering and microscopes are what makes breadboards so useful for amateurs.

Side note: we call them breadboards for a reason--because they were originally bread boards--with clips, screws, and wires.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1920s_TRF_radio_manufactu...

> Furthermore, while Chibitronics focuses on providing solderless solutions for younger learners, the techniques shared in this post targets engineers who have the skill to routinely assemble modern SMT designs

(emphasis mine)

If that's the case, I'm even more confused as to why he posted this, not less.

As an engineer, my options for prototyping boards are quite expansive because I have money to spend and computer tools at my disposal. These choices range from old-school etching of PCBs; new-school CNC engraving of PCBs; cheap, slow boards from China; to expensive ($1000), fast boards from the US.

Doing this on paper with copper tape is a cool hack, I just don't see a lot of benefit over other options.

> cheap, slow boards from China

I've bought about a dozen chinese prototype PCBs for $0.20 a board and experienced 6 days from order to arrival at my door (using $19 shipping). These are tested boards with 6 mil features up to 100x100 mm. And I've done the board designs using their free online editor. This has been mind-blowing.

Check out easyeda.com. (I'm not connected to the company, yada, yada, yada).

What I want is a cheap printer that can print PCBs.

Small CNC engraving/milling machines suitable for making PCBs (and with the benefit of being able to drill the holes for you) can be had for around $200. Microcenter sells one.

I thought there was no way that could be true, but it is [1]! I'd love to try out out and see how well it works in practice.

[1]http://www.microcenter.com/product/473125/mini_cnc_engraver_...

Presumably you want more than 2 layers. The technology for creating 2 layer boards has been around for quite a long time and is quite cheap.

Have you considered the Voltera PCB printer?

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