Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff

Professional Prototyping Hardware Defined (Breadboard, Jumpers, low R stuff)

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phil from seattle:
I use solderless BBs for a number of things but mostly to power up some part or module to see how to talk to it. Nothing high speed, though. Mainly the SBB just holds the parts in place to keep them from shorting. As others have said, go straight to PCBs if you can.  I will often buy or make simple breakout or "partial" boards before spinning up the "final" pcb. I use OSHPark for that a lot. Not super fast but very cheap for small stuff.  Others will etch or mill small test boards.

You can find breakout boards for a lot of the standard IC footprints, by the way.

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: Mecanix on July 21, 2020, 12:13:56 pm ---
--- Quote from: tggzzz on July 21, 2020, 11:17:25 am ---Not necessarily, for example

--- End quote ---

Work of art, and skillful. Thanks for sharing those, inspiring. Pretty much what I've been bound too lately, although not as elegant, similar processes were imposed to get result in some of the real-life sim I had to put up with (i.e. single layer pcb cnc mill'ed with a 30deg endmill and then manually drilled). Tried/failed chemical etching fantasies though (tried once mind you, and wont ever again lol), and now hope to move on to bread-boarding shall we have a semi-professional approach to that. When I say semi I mean by that ultra low impedance (preferably), stable contacts and some decent leads & pins. For some fck ing strange reason this is nowhere to be found although fairly easy to achieve diy with the right material/construction, I'm guessing.

--- End quote ---

No need to resort to milling per se. The gaps in those PCBs were hand cut using a dremel and a spherical dental burr - and a little practice.

Do have a look at the "manhattan" examples I pointed to in https://bristol.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=resources:pcb#avoiding_solderless_breadboards You will find them educational.

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: sokoloff on July 22, 2020, 12:09:48 am ---Not my year, but 6.111 was one of my favorite undergrad courses. We had a “nerd kit” (briefcase with multiple breadboards and a back plane connector similar to the TI NuBus). This year looks like more generic kits. Final project was with at least one other student (by requirement) which meant usually multiple of these kits linked together.



--- End quote ---

And then somebody dropped some equipment onto the bench with a thump, and you had to figure out which connection had moved. Not my idea of a good use of my time.

TheUnnamedNewbie:
Someone who is a 'professional' will not throw out breadboards cause some people on the internet say they are not 'professional'. Just because a picture of Jim Williams' desk doesn't have a breadboard on it does not mean a) he never used them and b) you shouldn't use them.

Use whatever works. If breadboards work for your application, great. I still use them a lot because sometimes I just need to quickly add a low-speed buffer in front of a signal or something like that, and guess what, making a PCB takes time. It has nill to do with cost, or effort, or performance. It has to do with 'I need to test this *now*', and a breadboard works.

Know the limitations, and go with them. I agree that for most prototyping work, you should just get it onto a cheap PCB when it is anything fast or sensitive. It is so easy to do that, so there is no reason not to. But never feel like you shouldn't use a breadboard in a situation 'because it is not professional'.

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: TheUnnamedNewbie on July 22, 2020, 08:08:43 am ---Someone who is a 'professional' will not throw out breadboards cause some people on the internet say they are not 'professional'. Just because a picture of Jim Williams' desk doesn't have a breadboard on it does not mean a) he never used them and b) you shouldn't use them.

Use whatever works. If breadboards work for your application, great. I still use them a lot because sometimes I just need to quickly add a low-speed buffer in front of a signal or something like that, and guess what, making a PCB takes time. It has nill to do with cost, or effort, or performance. It has to do with 'I need to test this *now*', and a breadboard works.

Know the limitations, and go with them. I agree that for most prototyping work, you should just get it onto a cheap PCB when it is anything fast or sensitive. It is so easy to do that, so there is no reason not to. But never feel like you shouldn't use a breadboard in a situation 'because it is not professional'.

--- End quote ---

My comments have been about solderless breadboards, not about other types of breadboards. Contrary to your statement, Jim Williams used breadboards extensively - as shown in the picture.

You should indeed use whatever works and know the limitations. Beginners are unlikely to know the latter and how it affects the (probability of the) former. More importantly, they are unlikely to be able to distinguish between the consequences of a construction technique and the consequences of their design.

Finally, it is not solderless breadboard vs PCB - there are many alternatives, as illustrated in https://entertaininghacks.wordpress.com/2020/07/22/prototyping-circuits-easy-cheap-fast-reliable-techniques/ Many of those are obsolete, but manhattan and a few others remain valuable.

Manhattan and dead-bug techniques are also fast to implement, especially when considering debugging time.

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