Hexapod Carnival Surface Mount Protoboard

Hexapod Carnival protoboards are designed for direct surface mount prototyping. The pads have a horizontal pitch of 50-mil (1.27mm), which works well for components using SOIC, SOT-23, TO-252, 0603 and 1206 footprints.

Carnival protoboards have a 4-layer design consiting of: 1) top pads; 2) ground plane; 3) vertical cross-connections, 4) bottom pads. 

The central SOIC pads on layer-1 are connected through to the matching square pads on layer-4 using vias-in-pads PCB fabrication technology. When an IC is soldered to the front of the board, the matching pads on the back make it easy to route signals to the through-hole connections on the left and right.

The mounting holes and ground ring around the edge of the board are connected to the layer-2 ground plane, along with the rectangular ground pads running along the middle of the board. 

The opposing "teeth" provide top-bottom connectivity using layer-3. 

Carnival protoboards are good for logic and microcontroller circuits where a large fraction of the IC pins will be connected to through-hole headers. 

Carnival protoboards come in two sizes:

• carnival A (bAse) is 30 x 70 x 1.6mm
• carnival W (Wide) is 40 x 70 x 1.6mm

All boards have ENIG (gold flashed) surface finish and use a matte-green solder mask to reduce glare when working under bright lighting.

Design templates are available to plan your circuit:

• carnival A design template (PDF)
• carnival W design template (PDF)