No Etch Circuit Board Technique

This is a method I use to make power circuits.

Problem: How to connect a heavy wire to small component leads?

Solution: Flatten solid wire and drill through it.

I first used this technique in a project I have posted to this site previously, but I did not elaborate on it then. This whole article is about the method I am doing. The introductory picture shows the top of the board I will be using this method with. What interests us is what is going on underneath though. We'll get to that shortly.

In this image we can see I have already bent a piece of thick wire and flattened it where I need to drill through it.

Here I have used a felt tip marker to mark where I want to work on the wire. Look carefully for blue marker marks on the wire.

Here we can see how I am flattening out the wire. I am using an anvil, and a small hammer with a flat face on it. Note that I am not using a large hammer, this is delicate work.

My piece of wire hardly looks like a piece of wire any longer. Now it more resembles a small flat bar. Try to form the wire while it is still round, because the wire becomes more difficult to bend after it has been hammered flat.

Here we see the conductor aligned over the leads the conductor needs to attach to. I'm not calling it a piece of wire anymore because it really isn't.

Again I am marking where I wish to work on my material. In this case where I want to drill my holes. Try to line things up well here so it will be easy to fit the workpiece onto the project.

I have brought my conductor back to the anvil in order to centerpunch it so I can drill it out.

Here I am drilling holes in my conductor so I can put my component leads through it.

Now I have to put the conductor on the board, on the leads it needs to attach to, in order to solder it. I took this photograph when I test fit the conductor. It fits.

All that remains to do now is simply to solder the leads to the conductor. I also trimmed the excess on the end before doing this too.