Electronic – Best solution for compact wiring on stripboard

prototypingstripboardwiring

When transferring a circuit from breadboard to stripboard, I often struggle to manage the wiring; often it starts looking like an overgrown garden; the components inevitably start disappearing under the wires. Not to mention the wires disappearing under each other, making mistakes near impossible to trace. But I want to keep the board as small as possible.

What kind of wires should be (or could be, or are most often) used for low voltage, low current circuits?

Up til now I've used the same wire as with the breadboard, (single strand) as I find it easy to work with since it retains its shape and I can route it round components. However, it's quite thick so doesn't lend itself to compact boards. See pic below:

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I searched on Google and decided that this looked like the neatest (or at least most manageable) stripboard circuit out of the results:

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What kind of wiring is that? I can't find any cable like it for sale. (At least not single core, but I don't fancy spending hours taking the outer sheath off ethernet cables or the like.) (I assume they're multi-strand.) The closest I can find is 30awg hook-up wire, but the outer diameter of that doesn't seem much less than what I use for breadboards.

Advice would be great. Thanks

Best Answer

Wire wrapping with a proper tool is actually a great technique for building one-off circuits with lots of DIL ICs on. It's easier if you use sockets: http://www.jameco.com/1/3/dip-wire-wrap-ic-sockets although it adds to the cost. It can be less time-consuming than soldering thousands of joints by hand, too.

http://makezine.com/2009/07/27/lost-knowledge-wire-wrapping/