Breadboards, issues, quality, the hunt for well made

Hi There Catwell,

This is an interesting subject! I'm not this interested in solderless but fast and rugged is important for me. I work mainly in the area of power electronics, so solderless seams impossible for me. What i used several times is a copper cladded board (ground plane) on which small copper strips are glued (with superglue, sets in a second). The strips make the higher potentials and signals. If i need a 'standard' circuit, for example a controller circuit with lots of smd's, i use a small routed board to glue also to the copper cladded board. This system makes a good and easy to modify circuit within a few days. This approach is less interesting for digital boards i guess. I'm getting rather experienced in drawing schematics, routing and making PCB's with chemicals, therefore that aprroach also works for me. You need to be aware that the first routed board is never 100% correct, but most of the times good enough to build a reasonable first sample. What i tried just recently is printing service text on a home made PCB with a laserjet, glossy paper and a iron. This actually works! There are a lot of people using this technique also for the copper tracks but i like the traditional way of chemicals. :-)

Not answering your question, but feeding a new discussion about home brew stuff

Best regards,

Enrico Migchels

Power conversion design engineer

Heliox B.V.

Best , the Netherlands

www.heliox.nl

Hi Catwell,

Agree with friend Enrico.

Cheap breadboards have internal connecting lugs made from thinner gauge sheets or sheets of substandard material to reduce cost.

It is better you switch over to veroboard or strip board where you have to solder the components, and use jumpers to connect the tracks in case of strip boards. The tracks may be reinforced for high current by soldering copper strips/wires onto the printed tracks.

Excellent options.

I still like the ease of popping in/out components on a breadboard. Technically speaking, in an ideal situation I would not have to question solder connections with a breadboard. And I find desoldering a troubled circuits even more detestable than faulty breadboards.

Anyone have any experience with 3M Solderless Breadboards?

Hi Catwell,

Hope I am not wrong if I presume you represent 3M.

I am not part of the 3M machine, so don't worry.

I only suggested 3M for quality reasons. I just want a breadboard with certain amount of Q&A, not part of the millions that fall off of an assembly line.

C

I grew up using Wisher branded boards without ever really encountering any issues - element14 appear to have some of them still https://au.element14.com/c/tools-production-supplies/prototyping-tools-breadboards/solderless-breadboards?brand=wisher. At least initially, we could see they were different as they often used a beige plastic whereas their competitors used white - now it seems most boards are the same plain "white" colour. Regardless, where my cheap ones have failed, the Wisher I have from over 10 years ago still gets use and still does the job well today.

I wonder if you could infer something about the quality of the boards just by weighing them - I suspect the thin metal strips of the newer cheapies would weigh less. Another factor that's hard to gauge is the possible "fatigue" factor in the bars/strips - especially if someone shoves a power diode with a chunky lead down one of the holes and expects to reuse it with an 1/8W resistor later.

- Gough

I seem to recall you could change the contacts in the better quality boards (I think Maplin used to sell one that did that in the '80s).

Rod

I've used many brands over the years without many contact issues, but I don't actually use them much. The only brand I really remember is Bimboard which were blue with interlocks that allowed multiple breadboards to attach to each other. My main issue with some of the cheaper brands is the power bus section is only held on with flimsy tape. I guess they are intended to be stuck to a substantial substrate

Same here. I haven't had many contact issues over the years and currently use a few of these Twin breadboards.

Some people swear by 3M boards, but I used this one and don't remember that much of a difference. They are, in turn, manufactured by Assembly Specialists

Another one that was recommended to me are BusBoard Prototype Systems.

There's such a large range of solderless breadboards these days and the quality varies greatly even with in the same brand.

If you tear down a solderless breadboard you'll find that the conductors are merely bulldog clip style shaped u channels.

The grabbing force of each hole can be influenced by the wires or component pins inserted on neighbouring holes that are on the same clip.

Leads from some components like small signal diodes and 0.125W resistors are too narrow for a reliable connection. Other components have pins that are too short such as some DIP switches.

Some of the cheaper brands of breadboards don't even have the u channel bus bars inserted correctly so that when a wire is inserted it won't be between the two contacts but askew to one side.

I've found that the optimal wire diameter is between 0.70mm to 22 AWG. It's the diameter of the precut breadboard wires.

E14 sell them https://au.element14.com/search?st=923345  but they're not cheap.

Once a design has been proven it can then be transferred to a PCB.