Stripboard

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A piece of unused stripboard

Stripboard is the generic name for a widely
used type of electronics prototyping board
characterized by a 0.1 inches (2.54 mm)
regular (rectangular) grid of holes, with
wide parallel strips of copper cladding
running in one direction all the way across
one side of the board. It is commonly also
known by the name of the original product
Veroboard, which is a trademark, in the UK,
of British company Vero Technologies Ltd
and Canadian company Pixel Print Ltd. In
using the board, breaks are made in the
tracks, usually around holes, to divide the
strips into multiple electrical nodes. With
care, it is possible to break between holes
to allow for components that have two pin
rows only one position apart such as twin
row headers for IDCs.

Stripboard is not designed for surface-

mount components, though it is possible
to mount many such components on the
track side, particularly if tracks are
cut/shaped with a knife or small cutting
disc in a rotary tool.

Variations
Stripboard is available from many vendors.
All versions have copper strips on one
side. Some are made using printed circuit
board etching and drilling techniques,
although some have milled strips and
punched holes. The original Veroboard
used FR-2 synthetic-resin-bonded paper
(SRBP) (also known as phenolic board) as
the base board material. Some versions of
stripboard now use higher quality FR-4
(fiberglass-reinforced epoxy laminate)
material.[1]

Hole spacing
Stripboard holes are drilled on 0.1 inches
(2.54 mm) centers. This spacing allows
components having pins with a 0.1 inches
(2.54 mm) spacing to be inserted.
Compatible parts include DIP ICs, sockets
for ICs, some types of connectors, and
other devices.

Stripboards have evolved over time into

several variants and related products. For
example, a larger version using a 0.15 inch
(3.81 mm) grid and larger holes is
available, but is generally less popular
(presumably because it does not match up
with standard IC pin spacing).

Board dimensions
Stripboard is available in a variety of sizes.
One common size (at least in the United
Kingdom) is 160 mm x 100 mm.[2]
Assemblies

An example of a populated protoboard

The components are usually placed on the

plain side of the board, with their leads
protruding through the holes. The leads
are then soldered to the copper tracks on
the other side of the board to make the
desired connections, and any excess wire
is cut off. The continuous tracks may be
easily and neatly cut as desired to form
breaks between conductors using a 3 mm
twist drill, a hand cutter made for the
purpose, or a knife. Tracks may be linked
up on either side of the board using wire.
With practice, very neat and reliable
assemblies can be created, though such a
method is labour-intensive and therefore
unsuitable for production assemblies
except in very small quantity.

External wire connections to the board are

made either by soldering the wires through
the holes or, for wires too thick to pass
through the holes, by soldering them to
specially made pins called Veropins which
fit tightly into the holes. Alternatively, some
types of connectors have a suitable pin
spacing to be inserted directly into the
board.

Comparison with other

systems
Wire wrap

For high density prototyping, especially of

digital circuits, wire wrap is faster and
more reliable than Stripboard for
experienced personnel.[3]

Breadboard

Veroboard is similar in concept and usage

to a plug-in breadboard, but is cheaper and
more permanent—connections are
soldered and while some limited reuse
may be possible, more than a few cycles
of soldering and desoldering are likely to
render both the components and the board
unusable. In contrast, breadboard
connections are held by friction, and the
breadboard can be reused many times.
However, a breadboard is not very suitable
for prototyping that needs to remain in a
set configuration for an appreciable period
of time nor for physical mock-ups
containing a working circuit or for any
environment subject to vibration or
movement.
Prototype boards
Stripboards have further evolved into a
larger class of prototype boards, available
in different shapes and sizes, with
different conductive trace layouts.

TriPad

TriPad stripboard has strips of copper broken up into

three-hole sections

For example, one variant is called a TriPad

board. This is similar to stripboard, except
that the conductive tracks do not run
continuously along the board but are
broken into sections, each of which spans
three holes. This allows the legs of two or
three components to be easily linked
together in the circuit conveniently without
the need for track breaks to be made.
However, in order to link more than three
holes together, wire links or bridges must
be formed and this can result in a less
compact layout than is possible with
ordinary stripboard.

Perf+
Perf+ prototyping board showing the pad shapes

Another variant is Perf+.[4] This is best

described as a selective stripboard.
Instead of having all the holes connected
together in a strip, a Perf+ board can have
holes connected to the bus using a small
dab of solder. On the other side the busses
run in another direction, allowing compact
layouts of complicated circuits by passing
signals over each other on different layers
of the board.
Other

400 point PCB that is an electrical equivalent of a

solderless breadboard

Other prototype board variants have

generic layouts to simplify building
prototypes with integrated circuits,
typically in DIP shapes, or with transistors
(pads forming triangles). In particular,
some boards mimic the layout of
breadboards, to simplify moving a non-
permanent prototype on a breadboard to a
permanent construction on a PCB. Some
types of boards have patterns for
connectors on the periphery, like DB9 or
IDC headers, to allow connectors with non-
standard pin spacings to be easily used.[5]
Some come in special physical shapes, to
be used to prototype plug-in boards for
computer bus systems.

See also
Point-to-point construction
Perfboard

References
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Stripboard.

1. BusBoard Prototype Systems Ltd. "ST3U

StripBoard Datasheet" Retrieved on 2010-
10-20. Archived 2011-09-11 at the
Wayback Machine
2. Prototype and development boards
from RS Components [1] The board size
with the largest number of products listed
is 160 mm x 100 mm.
3. Bilotta, Anthony J.: Connections in
Electronic Assemblies. Marcel Dekker:
1985. ISBN 0-8247-7319-5
4. Original Kickstarter for Perf+. "Perf+ the
perfboard reinvented" Retrieved on 2015-
4-17.
5. BusBoard Prototype Systems Ltd.
"PR3UC ProtoBoard With Connectors
Datasheet" Retrieved on 2010-10-20.

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Last edited 11 days ago by Jonesey95

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