From breadboard to circuit board (PCB): Now what?

We all have played more or less with our new microcontroller, our Raspberry Pi, Arduino (or something else?). And when external electronics components and wiring are needed we use, what else, a breadboard:

Breadboards (or protoboards) are easy and fun, they give you convenience for your electronics projects and no soldering is required. You have positive and negative "rails" or buses/bus strips which gives you easy access to powering your components. And of course, you also get to have jump wires (or jumper wires):

With them you can connect one breadboard contact point with another without soldering. Made a mistake? No problem, you just take the jump wire out and you place it elsewhere within seconds. That simple.

But what really happens when you have built a real nice, useful or practical project that you need to make it "permanent", meaning that you want to keep using it for as long as it lasts? Then the breadboard is no more use, let alone that you will probably want your (one and only) breadboard for your new and upcoming projects.

Well, it's then time to go to a board and do the soldering job, to permanently connect your electronics elements with each other on a circuit board. What does this mean for you? First of all you will need some soldering equipment, such as:

• A soldering iron
• A soldering iron stand, to hold your soldering iron when not soldering
• A desoldering pump, to remove folder from places where there shouldn't be.
• Desoldering wire (optional)
• Cleaning sponge (optional - you can use a normal sponge)
• Solder wire
• Tweezers to be able to pick and place your components in the right position

You can get the above items in the form of kits from e-shops or eBay with prices starting from 8€:

What I have also found very convenient is the "soldering helping hand" or "third hand soldering iron stand", usually accompanied with a magnifying glass:

This thing has adjustable hands which keep the cables/components close to each other while you are holding the soldering iron and the solder. As cheap as 5€.

OK, now you know what you need to solder, but how do you solder? That needs quite some training. Look for some videos on Youtube, they are really helpful, such as this one:

The next thing you need now is some "circuit boards". Here there are two options basically:

Perfboards: These can get very tricky, as they differ quite from the breadboard you are used to. To start with, there are no "rails" or "buses" or "conductive tracks" to help you have things easily connected. They are like independent pin grids and you will need some special wire to create your own "conductive tracks" (called verowire):

Stripboards or veroboard: Here the grid of holes have "rails" or "buses", but they are full of them. That means, that you are running the risk of short-circuit if you are not careful. Basically, what you need to do here is to divide the strips by making "breaks":

Happy soldering!