When you want to mount components on a PCB or a piece of prototyping board, you not only want to do this quickly, but also tidily. The bending of really tidy wire links with the correct pitch is often a tedious chore. The following is a handy aid for doing this.
Using a small piece of 0.1 inch (2.54 mm) prototyping board, you can very easily make a handy bending jig for wire links. With a jigsaw, cut the piece of prototyping board into a staircase shape as shown in the drawing. You can make it as big as you need. Make sure that the horizontal cuts are slightly towards the outside with respect to the holes, so that clear indentations remain in the horizontal sections.
Bending a wire link is now very easy: choose the desired pitch on the jig (dashed line), take a piece of wire and fold it sharply around the indentations corresponding to the selected pitch. A neat wire link is the result, with exactly the right pitch and ready for soldering tightly into the PCB or prototyping board. With close-fitting wire links the board looks much better and they are also mounted much more quickly. To fcourse he bender is also suitable for resistors with leads.
Author :Louter van der Kolk - Copyright : Elektor
