I have seen several products to coat traces or jumper wires to electrically isolate them. I will be (foolishly?) soldering wires to my Cerb40s, and would like to ensure that no bare wire is exposed, as space is tight on this board and a short is just too easy once the wire insulation pulls back from soldering. Can anyone recommend a product for this that has worked for them in the past? Any tips as to usage?
Hi Gregg,
first question, are you really going to solder wires directly to Cerb40’s pads? You’re not going to solder a (male) header onto that and use (female) socket (or vice versa)? What’s the scenario you want to use the board in that setup for?
(and I’m not trying to talk you out of it, just understand if other options might better suit - for instance, make up a 40-pin PCB with screw down terminals if you want to use loose wires, as an example)
Then you’re looking for heat shrink tubing. I bought a stock from Fry’s in the US when I was last there - it was about $10US and came with a number of different sizes. Just pick the most suitable one and shrink it slowly (I now use my hot air rework station for this)
Hi Gregg,
The other option that has worked well for me in the past is enameled copper wire.
I just get a ball of solder on the end of my iron, dip the wire in to burn off a small amount of the enamel and tin the end and then solder the wire to the target pad.
The enamel coating provides a very robust insulation between wires.
In addition to what Brett said, while you can solder wire directly to the Cerb40, I would recommend against that unless this is a permanent project. That is, once you’ve wired it up, it will never change.
An alternative solution: I’ve had very good luck on semi-permanent projects by soldering male headers to the Cerb40 and mounting it on a DIP40 socket to one of Adafruit’s perma-proto boards (Adafruit Perma-Proto Half-sized Breadboard PCB - 3 Pack! : ID 571 : $12.50 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits). You then have plenty of room to solder (and unsolder/resolder) wires to the proto board, which has extra rugged plating. The proto board takes any abuse very well, and your Cerb40 remains safe in the DIP socket, and more importantly, free from the stresses of too much soldering.
The soldered wire will be on a finished product. I intend to use four Cat5 to have 32 I/Os. I’ll cable-tie it all together and heat shrink it up with clear heat shrink. The bulk of the wiring overshadows the Cerb40’s featherweight 4 grams. At installation, it will just be a plug-in part of the wiring harness held to the (wooden) cabinet by a screw down cable tie. Forgot to mention, keeping the price down <$40 a unit is one of the main goals. More than that and we might as well continue to use Phidgets. Digital I/O will be the main function of the product.
@ ransomhall - I like the perma-proto board, thanks for the link! At ~$4 a piece, it may be a bit expensive for this projects goals, but I’m ordering some.
Ahhh, now I see what you’re trying to do. Are you pre-tinning your wires? If you do that, you should be able to solder them in without the insulation retreating, even with lightweight cat5 insulation.