I was wondering if hard wiring components on a solid teflon board would be a better choice sound wise to a standard pcb. The reason I ask Is that i have access to 1/4 teflon stock and best of all it's free
I know it's more work and butt ugly but I seem to recall some years back that the ultra high end amps used it.
I know it's more work and butt ugly but I seem to recall some years back that the ultra high end amps used it.
kendt
You are right on the money. The "best" way to build things (assuming there is such a thing of course, flames come here ...) is to build using a three dimensional "birds nest" topology. This is because air is the next best thing to vacuum. What we are talking about here is dielectric constant, dielectric loss and length of wires.
Teflon is just about the lowest dielectric loss material out there. It still has a significantly higher dielectric constant than air, but dielectric loss is probably much more important as the other capacitances will likely be swamped out by components anyway.
As far as how much work it is, "birds nest" is likely the hardest + hardest to troubleshoot, and it blows up in your face as your component count increases. Teflon hardwiring, where one uses the component's own leads as much as possible is not that hard provided you plan ahead + you get more layers and the opportunity to have greater distances between the "layers". I recommend at least laying out the components to see that it will all fit + put a temporary piece of paper on the teflon while building. May I also suggest that you give yourself a little more space than you thought you needed ....
So you are right. I think it looks pretty but most people don't view it that way.
Note, printed circuit boards are better at one thing - low impedance ground planes but I expect that to be a non-issue in your case even though one major application targeted/approached with such ground planes are current applications.
BTW, please do post pictures for inspiration!
Petter
PS: If you do need to glue to it, look it up on the web - I believe you need etching glue, but you should not need to glue things if you build it "right".
You are right on the money. The "best" way to build things (assuming there is such a thing of course, flames come here ...) is to build using a three dimensional "birds nest" topology. This is because air is the next best thing to vacuum. What we are talking about here is dielectric constant, dielectric loss and length of wires.
Teflon is just about the lowest dielectric loss material out there. It still has a significantly higher dielectric constant than air, but dielectric loss is probably much more important as the other capacitances will likely be swamped out by components anyway.
As far as how much work it is, "birds nest" is likely the hardest + hardest to troubleshoot, and it blows up in your face as your component count increases. Teflon hardwiring, where one uses the component's own leads as much as possible is not that hard provided you plan ahead + you get more layers and the opportunity to have greater distances between the "layers". I recommend at least laying out the components to see that it will all fit + put a temporary piece of paper on the teflon while building. May I also suggest that you give yourself a little more space than you thought you needed ....
So you are right. I think it looks pretty but most people don't view it that way.
Note, printed circuit boards are better at one thing - low impedance ground planes but I expect that to be a non-issue in your case even though one major application targeted/approached with such ground planes are current applications.
BTW, please do post pictures for inspiration!
Petter
PS: If you do need to glue to it, look it up on the web - I believe you need etching glue, but you should not need to glue things if you build it "right".
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