Complete Noob Utterly confused by perf board

[nialldoran91]

Hey guys im more or less a noob and i sucked at electronics in school and want to improve my skills and knowledge by building a few stomps and i plan to start off small and easy, now i have no way of etching PCB available to me, so im guna use perfboard, im not really sure what im trying to ask, i guess its how does perf board work? ive seen the front of them many times with everything solderd up, but its the back where components get soldered im confused with, how do i know what to solder to where? not having copper tracks to follow has turned me upside down,

ive got DIY layout creator and plannnig to build a few stomps from the perf schematics, my first will probly be the easiest i can find out of them all on perf which is Easy Drove by Joe Davisson, so could some one help me out please? and explain a little more about how perfs should be soldered around back, i checked the wiki already and couldnt find nothing, if i have missed it point me in the right direction,

thanks in advance and please dont laugh at me
Niall

[rousejeremy]

Welcome to the forum.
Build this,  http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?board=6.0
it'll answer most of your questions.

[smallbearelec]

This article on building the Tweak-O:

http://www.smallbearelec.com/Projects/TweakO/TweakO.htm

is a good intro to building on perf.

SD

[jefe]

For a good visual of the front and back of a perfboard layout, check out some of runoffgroove's projects. Here's the tubereamer, for example:

http://www.runoffgroove.com/tubereamer.html

Perf can be confusing at first. It helps if you are good at visualizing objects in 3D, and can flip them around spacially in your head.

[nialldoran91]

Excellant, thanks guys some great things so far, ive ordered parts ive been missing for some of the projects and im guna build the beginner project and probably the tweak too,
and the runoffgroove site is extremely helpful to see front and back of perfs, with some good schematics and hope to build a few of those when i get my skills up to scratch

Niall

[Top Top]

I build on perf all the time. I just "recreate" the copper tracks with bent component legs.

You can use a simple photo editing program and print out a backwards image of the PCB layout and have it next to you as you work. Use the tracks to guide you in which component gets connected to which.