General > General Technical Chat
3M breadboards for cheap
thanasisk:
Reviving this old thread.. Has anyone in europe been able to order any breadboards from assemblyspecialist?
Thr gold plated one (equivalent to the 3m 923749) looks very interesting. I guess robustness of the contacts would be better compared to the «normal» breadboards (as is the cade with the molex gold plated connectors). This breadboard is impossible to order nowadays from Mouser/digikey in europe without a minimum special order of 10 pieces..
ebastler:
I have bought one of the Assembly Specialist boards now (#BB336, four of the white modules mounted on a base plate); just brought it back home from a US trip. Unfortunately I do not find it as convincing as I had hoped it to be:
The contacts in all four plugboard modules are too stiff, in my opinion. I struggle mightily to insert wire bridges -- I often have to resort to a pair of needle-nose pliers to jam the wire ends into the spring contacts, and have already mangled quite a few wires in the process. And yes, that's using 22 AWG wires which the breadboard is intended for, including those from the starter kit I also got from Assembly Specialists.
The contacts in the separate, horizontal rails across the top prove that they can do better. These are smooth to work with, the way I had expected. Easy to insert a jumper wire with your fingers, without bending the wires.
Apparently, the tolerances in making the breadboard contacts are too loose to ensure consistent contact tension. Disappointing. Not being US-based, it is impractical for me to get a replacement from Assembly Specialists; so I will have to chalk this up under "learned the hard way"...
cdev:
You could try inserting a strong, conical piece of metal (Ive used the point on a cheap compass) in the holes to make them a bit more flexible. Of course, you don't need to poke every hole. Try every couple of holes or once in the middle of each row.. See if that loosens it up.
rdl:
A big problem people complain about when using cheap breadboards is flaky, intermittent connections. I have never had that problem using 3M boards. They are tight. I almost always have to use tweezers or something to insert leads and wire jumpers in them.
ebastler:
--- Quote from: cdev on January 12, 2019, 03:44:58 pm ---You could try inserting a strong, conical piece of metal (Ive used the point on a cheap compass) in the holes to make them a bit more flexible. Of course, you don't need to poke every hole. Try every couple of holes or once in the middle of each row.. See if that loosens it up.
--- End quote ---
Thanks cdev. Yes, I will play around a bit with various pointed objects, trying to find one which loosens the contacts up enough, without opening them up too far. Having to pre-poke each hole before pluggin in a wire would be annoying -- but still better than needing pliers to shove in the wire, and discarding one in four wires because I mangled it...
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