Preferred tools.

Here I provide details about the best tools to use when mounting the boards and when making your own L'ilBoards. Don't let the detail here scare you: all you really need are the hand tools that you likely already have: a drill press is great but not required; a 7/64" bit is probably the only bit you really need to convert a chunk of pre-drilled protoboard to a baseboard; a basic soldering iron and solder is definately needed—a temperature controlled iron is nice but not necessary; side cutters and a simple wire stripper are needed, and basic screwdrivers and wrenches will do the job of mounting nuts and bolts to the baseboard.

Some of the notes here are very general to DIY/hobby electronics, but by no way is the page complete in that regard: I have not even mentioned pliers and cutters!

Nut drivers are better than socket wrenches for two reasons:

1. A run of the mill 1/4" nut driver has an outer diameter of about 3/8" (0.375") and my available samples of 1/4" socket wrenches (Four different pieces from 3 different manufacturers) run higher, from 0.385" to 0.395". The L'ilBoard design is such that wires can be close enough to corner nuts for this to be sometimes a problem. I'd like to find a slighlty smaller O.D. nut driver for that reason. I did turn down a socket wrench using a metal lathe to about 0.360", it is good for those tight spots;
2. A nut driver allows a nut to be tightened onto a long bolt: a socket wrench can easily “bottom out”.

In Photo 1, the red thing is a very handy Heath nut starter. These were included in many (most, all?) Heathkits and are worth their weight in gold. It is effectively a 2-ended plastic nut driver which is somewhat elastic so the nut is held regardless of rotation angle. One end picks up 1/4" nuts (as normal for #4-40 screws) and the other picks up 3/16" nuts which are the normal size used with #2-56 threads. It cannot apply much torque but can spin a nut all the way down 'till it needs a wrench to tighten it. Question: did anyone ever make an equivalent tool for metric nuts?

Photo 1. A comparison of nut drivers. Most seem to have an outer diameter of 0.375 inches.

Photo 2. .

As a Canadian I feel it is my duty to tell the world about the Robertson screw . They do, finally, seem to be catching on, especially in the US for wood work. Simply put, it is the best design for one handed, quick insertion and turning for a wood screw or a machine screw. Photo 2 shows a #4-40 screw and its (#0 size) driver. That's a yellow-handled driver, eh?

The kind of wire stripper that is basically two sharpened v-grooves that cut through the insulation when the tool handles are squeezed should be avoided. Especially when used with solid wire, as is used in solderless breadboards and here when machined socket pins are used on the L'ilBoards, they are a bad idea. They nick. A nick, with very few cycles of bending, can lead to a broken wire: at best a nuisance, at worse a piece of solid wire stuck inside a connector that can't be removed easily.

So add one of these strippers (Photo 3) to your shopping list: you won't regret it! You will, however have to watch the range of guages that the tool you select can strip: you will need to be able to cover the range AWG18 down to AWG24 or better, to AWG26.

Photo 3. After stripping the wire, I find this kind of stripper great for holding the wire for tinning (inset)!

As far as I know, there is no place you can buy just one small file: they always seem to be in sets. What you sometimes need to enlarge L'ilBoard corner holes is a small circular cross section file, no larger than 1/10". I have several, one from a set I've had since I was a kid, one from I don't know where, and a third from a large set of riffling files I inherited. A cheap set can be had for about $4 now it seems. The flat and square ones from the set soon become necessary when cutting panels for switches and connectors, so it is no extravagence to get the set.

Photo 4. Several circular files.

The table below is a reference to the numbered drill sizes applicable to L'ilBoards.

Photo 5. My venerable set of numbered drill bits.

The table refers to both hole sizes that are part of the L'ilBoards themselves when manufactured, and to sizes to use when mounting the boards. When enlarging holes in a piece of perfboard it is best to have a good snug fit. My tap drill table says that #32 is a close fit for a 4-40UNC screw, but I go down at least 3 sizes to a #35, and even down to #38. The ideal is to have a bit of self-tapping action so that the screws do not fall out nor is there any positional slop. The best drill to use depends on the material being drilled. A thicker FR-4 (which is fibreglass reinforced) will need a larger drill than a thin phenolic board.

The metric case.

An M3.0 screw is slightly wider than a 4-40UNC screw (by only 0.155 mm or about .0061"). So, L'ilBoards are tighter when using these metric screws. Depending on the flexibility of the base board, and whether the L'ilBoards have been used a little or a lot, it might be necessary to enlarge their corner 1/4 holes with a small circular file.

As far as drilling for M3.0 screws in the base board, the tap drill table says a 3.4 mm is a close fit, so anywhere down to 2.9 mm should be fine, again depending on the material being used. Either a #32 or a 7/64" bit would likely be fine as well.

Photo 6. The shear I bought on ebay. The handle is more than 2 feet long.

This tool is a bit of a luxury, and would only be useful if you were cutting your own boards, either from panelized arrays of lots of L'ilBoards or if you are cutting a fair number of DIY boards from perfboard.

Though mine (Photo 6) was sold as an 8" model, there is no way one can make a cut longer than about 5 inches. I use it when I receive a panel of L'ilBoards: there are 2 #2-56 screws spaced exactly 25 mm apart protruding up from the table I made for it, these allow me to bisect the corner holes, then bisect them again.