Prototyping circuits with transformers

I wondered how people generally went about prototyping circuits with transformers - do (say) the Lundahls fit into veroboard, or are they generally mounted off-board because their pins are too fat?

I like using veroboard myself but have never had cause to mount a transformer on it. I suspect it wouldn't fit but thought someone else might have tried it...

cheers,
James.

Veroboard is ok for this - you just have to drill the holes a bit bigger. Lundahl uses 1.4 or 1.5mm

Jakob E.

Don't drop those Lundahls, the pins are very fragile.
They don't bend, they break!

I made satellite PC boards with holes for pin-sockets to accommodate different size Lundahl transformers and with jumpers for setting them to any possible parallel/serial configuration. The satellite boards all have the same footprint which makes them interchangeable in the main PC board.

You could just lay out the main board to handle different transformers, but it gets messy if you want to add the versatility of changing the parallel/serial configurations.

I have little PC boards for sale for the LL1636, 1544A, 1550 transformers that allow the variety of primary connections possible to be wired up, but none for the others. I normally use "perf board" with holes on 0.1" centers for prototyping, but Tim has a great idea, too.

There are "families" of Lundahl transformers with the same pin-outs, such as the above and the LL1538/1538XL/1578/1578XL series that can give you some versatility without connection pain.