Improvised solder lug ideas-- Help

[twabelljr]

I do this all the time.  



The vero also seems to act as a heat sink so very little heat is transferred to the pot.  I actually prefer this now to the solder lugs and there's enough clearance to the back of the pot to allow you to still mount things without touching the vero.

Or stick it in a small piece of vero/perf.

This gives a great visual reference to Scruffie's suggestion of using vero or perf. I like it. The wire and the pot lug can all be soldered together at one time giving a secure connection. I am going to start ordering board mount pots now just to have the option on-board or off-board mounting easily available.

[IvIark]

Another advantage of doing it this way is that you could always include an extra row or two to give you extra holes for ground connections.  There's just something nice about having a solid and dedicated place like this for common connections.

[Hides-His-Eyes]

I once tried star grounding on one of those, it did not look good 

[ayayay!]

I just wire them "past" the lug:  Strip a little more insulation than usual off of the wire.  Tin your wire lightly here and there.  Press your thumb down tightly on the wire, up by the rivets on the pot.  Then you can "wire wrap" those lugs really tightly with about 3 good wraparounds on the post.  Solder it in, snip off the excess cable, then shrinkwrap it.  I use this method on those tiny 9mm Boss style pots from Smallbear.  Never had one fail. 

For extra good measure, dab on a little hotglue.   

[BadIdeas]

I'd heard of using Vero before and it seems like a pretty good idea, but since Paul (who seems to know his stuff) says it can be sturdy enough to solder the pins, I think I'll go that route. It uses less material and therefore saves money. The Vero does seem to make a good option for stringing other components across the pins, though, so I'll keep it in mind on a case-by-case basis.

Thanks for the visual, IvIark.

[IvIark]

There's no reason to limit yourself to one way of doing it.  I also often tin both surfaces and then tack solder the wire but there are instances where it would be more of a problem to do that, like in this build. 



With the pins pointing upwards, using vero so the wire can approach the connection from the under side was desirable whereas trying to tack solder would have been very awkward to do.  Of course in this instance you could wrap the wire round the post and do it that way, but vero is very easy to solder to and as an added advantage the friction of the wire in the hole holds it in pretty firmly in place so you don't even have to worry about that.

It's just another approach, and certainly one that some will find useful in some instances.

[twabelljr]

that would also work well for custom pot curves. Nice, simple way to mount tapering resistors. if you needed to change or remove them the pot would not be getting "cooked" as much by a hot iron.