Proto-Tile

A 'perfboard' is a PCB with a grid of holes drilled into it. The idea is you can assemble a PCB to test and iterate on a circuit immediately. Basically, you solder in electronic components and connect it up with manual traces. It forms an intermediate between 'solderless breadboards' (which are janky, relatively expensive, and impermanent) and an application-specific PCB (which you have to wait to get fabricated, is not very (or at all) modifiable, and can be even more expensive).

Some boards have limited connections in the form of long traces ('stripboard', var. 'veroboard') or short traces (bus-board), to help reduce the amount of manual wiring, but the most common is just straight perfboard with no connections whatsoever. The category of products is known 'prototype board'[1].

Frankly, most extant products suck.

Perf-boards often are bare FR-4 with completely unfinished copper that tends to delaminate and peel off. There's no soldermask anywhere. I've seen amazingly bad tolerances.

Worst of all, the price. A small perfboard is usually several bucks at least, and can easily be $10 or more depending on what you look for in quality. I've seen perfboard as cheap as $1 or so, but the area is tiny, and the quality really lacks.

Some examples, just to show what I mean. I apologize for picking on these, but it's not like anyone else is doing better:

  • ElectroCookie Protoboard

    : This is the best mainstream product I've found. Good physical quality, including ENIG finish, reasonable traces, a bit pricey at ≈ $1.70/pc, plus shipping. Traces could be thicker and silkscreen could indicate them (and not indicate the brand so prominently).

  • Chip Quik SBBTH1506-1

    : I used this board a lot for years. As of this writing, it's $1.09/pc, has soldermask and even an ENIG finish. However, it's small, has wasted space in the form of text, fiberglass thread that flakes off the sides from low-quality V-cuts, and no traces at all.

  • Adafruit Perma-Proto Half-Sized

    : has traces and three-color silkscreen on front, but no soldermask at all on the back, and at $4.20/pc is simply too expensive. Photo doesn't even look like an ENIG finish, and the traces are thin.

  • Vectorbord 8029

    [sic]: I picked this up second-hand, but new it's a whooping $8.48/pc, has no soldermask or surface finish, no traces, and suffers from awful tolerances.

Surely, making a good, cheap board with holes and some common-sense traces and a good build quality should be easy!

Proto-Tile

Long story short, it is. Designing my own prototyping board, which I unimaginatively named a "Proto-Tile", was simple, mostly an exercise in careful copy-paste in KiCad. And the result is simply better.

Photo of Proto-Tile.

First, there are traces. They are fat and present on both sides of the board, to reduce parasitic resistance[2]. The arrangement has been carefully thought out: there are three areas where common DIP packages can go, side-by-side, but each area is also wide enough that you can put a microcontroller breakout over it (e.g. my one true love, the Raspberry Pi Pico).

Power and ground route through the middle of these areas, with periodic breakouts and exposed, easily cuttable default-closed jumpers. The rest of the board is short, breadboard-style strips with default-open jumpers between every one, easily bridgeable with soldermask gaps. This gives great flexibility, allowing you to use the built-in copper to its fullest.

The overall build is thick FR-4, with actual routed edges, rounded corners, soldermask and silkscreen on both sides, and ENIG finish. The thing is crammed full of 1mm holes on a 0.1" grid, which interlock into an intricate trace pattern. Also included are six M3 mounting holes, spaced exactly 1" apart vertically and 2.8" apart horizontally. The sheer amount of metal on this board makes it pleasingly cool to the touch and gleam like a mirror.

The silkscreen shows all the connections on both sides. It labels (and groups by dashed lines) the columns (by groups of 2 instead of 5, which is more useful). It also labels rows, power, ground, and does not label me or any other such advertising.

Best of all, it costs only $0.70/pc (100 pcs), including shipping. (For lower volumes, it's better to use lead-free HASL, e.g. $0.75/pc (10 pcs)).[3]

I may decide to sell these myself eventually (at maybe like $1.00–1.50 plus shipping), but I can't be arsed right now. However, because I'm also so annoyed at the ecosystem being awful, I hereby offer my design for free:


proto-tile.7z

You may fabricate this board / have it fabricated. Furthermore, you may also re-sell any such boards with no financial obligation to me[4], although you must make it clear that I am the designer (e.g. by a link to this page), because that is the simple truth.

I would be happy if some 3rd party put this design into volume production, actually, because it would make the perfboard ecosystem much less sucky, so please do so!

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Notes