Manhattan and Pittsburgh Electronics Prototyping Techniques
Martin_H
Posts: 4,051
I recently came across a new technique for electronics prototyping that I haven't seen before. It is called the Manhattan style and looks like this:
https://i0.wp.com/www.pbase.com/daverichards/image/157055577/original.jpg
It uses a single sided copper coated board as a ground plane, and you cut up a second board into insulated pads. You super glue the pads to the board to match the schematic, and solder components and wires between pads. Anytime a component connects to ground you solder it to the ground plane. Given that this was on a Ham radio site I imagine the technique must be to mitigate RF noise.
A further elaboration is called the Pittsburgh style where the ground plane PCB has traces and pads etched onto it like this:
http://www.njqrp.org/sniffer/pittsburg-style_pcb.html
The build then uses through hole components as if they were surface mount devices and solders them to the pad. Again this was a Ham radio site so the large ground plane is probably a noise management strategy.
https://i0.wp.com/www.pbase.com/daverichards/image/157055577/original.jpg
It uses a single sided copper coated board as a ground plane, and you cut up a second board into insulated pads. You super glue the pads to the board to match the schematic, and solder components and wires between pads. Anytime a component connects to ground you solder it to the ground plane. Given that this was on a Ham radio site I imagine the technique must be to mitigate RF noise.
A further elaboration is called the Pittsburgh style where the ground plane PCB has traces and pads etched onto it like this:
http://www.njqrp.org/sniffer/pittsburg-style_pcb.html
The build then uses through hole components as if they were surface mount devices and solders them to the pad. Again this was a Ham radio site so the large ground plane is probably a noise management strategy.
Comments
It's basically what we did with tubes back in the days. The aluminium chassis was the ground plane. Components were connected either to ground or connections on ceramic stand offs, or strip boards.
The transistor/chip version of that was "dead bug" prototyping. Glue the chips and such to the copper ground plane upside down then hook up the connections. Saves needing those little breakout boards for the DIP chips.
The Pittsburg style looks like what we used to do back in school in the 1970's. Good stuff.
Or Bob Pease:
Back then it was probably true. PCBs in that era were single-sided and made from Bakelite, a brittle, brown proto-plastic composite. I'm sure that cracked traces and pad separation were not uncommon.
-Phil
I repaired a number of GE sets with early double sided boards that had soldered rivets instead of plated through holes. They were such a common failure mode that there was a hotline you could call that would tell you what points to add jumpers between to fix common issues.
C.W.
https://www.google.com/search?q=jim+williams+desk&rlz=1C1ASUT_enUS502US502&espv=2&biw=1600&bih=765&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwix5ouHp_bJAhVH-mMKHYD8C9AQsAQIGw
And here is the article on the Computer History Museum's website on Jim:
http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/an-analog-life-remembering-jim-williams/
OMG, I thought my bench got pretty bad between cleanups!
I remember working in a tv shop in the mid 70s, my job was to remove the back of the set and take a vacuum to the inside, make sure to catch all the litte critters that called it home, then had to check each tube in a checker, and clean control's. If that didn't fix it, we would have to dig deeper in to the chassis, with the guidance of the boss and a Sam's circuit diagram, Brown and burnt bakelite, from heat, current, high voltages, dust and roaches.
Those soldered rivet or wire wrapped conection's were a big problem.
He briefly mentions Manhattan style and through hole, but then explains why he prefers this technique.
I like the Manhattan idea as it saves doing any etching. No designing of trace layout, just slap pads and components down as the circuit and component shapes/sizes dictate. Perhaps better suited for one off prototyping. If you want to make many boards looks like Pittsburgh might be less work.
One major difference between the two is that Manhattan gives you a continuous solid ground plane where as Pittsburgh makes spaghetti of of your ground plane. That might be significant when dealing with high currents or high frequencies. The solid ground plane helps isolate boards if they are stacked nearby each other.
Any PCB layout gurus like to comment on that?
Power and ground rails help reduce some of the cross board clutter, but towards the end of construction I can find myself struggling to manage the complexity of the interconnections.
http://www.lpkfusa.com/
Never knew people had taken the trouble to put names to these things.
My first PCB layout, for my TTL and Nixie clock, was scribbled by hand on the board with an etch resist pen and dropped into a dish of conc. sulphuric acid. Let's just say that it etched rather quickly. Fastest turn around for a board I have ever seen!
https://aa7ee.wordpress.com/tag/manhattan-construction/
and a source for pads to do the construction method
Check ou MePads, MeSquares and the Solder bots tool for soldering at a right
angle two pieces of double sided board
qrpme.com/?p=HBREW
Tom