Basic Question: What's A Bredboard, and Should I Get One?

[sjaguar13]

First of all, what is it? I was talking to a guy who's helping me with LEDs and he said he was going to "breadboard his design". I read a few posts here and one guy said to a newbie, "The first thing you need is a breadboard." I ordered my LEDs and stuff and am thinking about getting a breadboard. From what I can figure out, it's a piece of plastic with holes in it. You stick parts and wires in those holes. The holes are small enough to force the parts and wires to touch, so you can test a circuit without having to solder it together? I went to RadioShack today, but they didn't have any and they were learning how to upgrade phones, so I couldn't really ask questions. I found one for $1.99 plus shipping. Should I get it?

 

[Josh]

breadboards are good for testing and stuff, but if your making a circuit you will want to keep it wont last. i recommend one. i am sure there is a shop where you live (local) that would supply one that would be cheaper than paying shipping. they are fairly popular, so i reckon you'll find one really easily.

Josh.

 

[mechie]

Breadboards

A word of warning...
You get what you pay for, a cheap breadboard is going to give you nightmares with unreliable connections.
Get the best you can afford - it's a tool that should last a lifetime if you look after it.
My personal favorite is ... Professional Plugblock, available from other suppliers - but this link has a fair picture :wink:

A couple or three of these clipped together should be suficcient.

 

[kinjalgp]

For tutorial on using bread board look at:
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/smart-strobe-light.63/

 

[Faisal__saf]

Re: Basic Question: What's A Bredboard, and Should I Get One

dear my friend
u should just order that breadboard it is very usefull and u'll be comfotable to test u'r cicuits on it
tanx
u'r friand
faisal

 

[sjaguar13]

I got a breadboard yesterday, but I don't know how to hook the battery up to it. What do I do?

 

[mechie]

Breadboard Power Rails

sjaguar13
If you look at the tutorial https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/smart-strobe-light.63/, at the very end of the tutorial is a picture. This particular type of breadboard has two rails across the top, one with a blue stripe and one with a red stripe. These are intended to carry power across the length of the board, allowing power leads (from a battery or bench supply) to connect to one end of the board.
When ever you want power you simply insert a short "patch lead" from one of these to the opint in the circuit requiring that power.
The picture shows a red lead and a black lead doing just that for the 8-pin IC shown.

ps. my breadboard circuits are never that neat !

 

[sjaguar13]

So I get a battery, use some of those jumper wires, and put the + in the red row and - in the blue row?

 

[grrr_arrghh]

Yes thats excactly what you do.

 

[Dean Huster]

Quality and guarantees.

As Mechie said, you get what you pay for. If you're just starting out (I assume), start with a small imported (from Asia somewhere) breadboard. But this thing won't last very long and begin to get intermittent and difficult to use. If you're intending to get hot and heavy into breadboarding, I'd purchase a larger, high-quality breadboard. The two brands that I recommend are Global Specialties and E&L. Both are American-made and both have an UNLIMITED LIFETIME WARRANTY. If your breadboard should fail to give you complete satisfaction (it gets intermittent or even if you've wrecked some of the holes by using wire that was too large or melted a section of it with a hot resistor or reverse-polarity IC), just return it to the manufacturer post-paid and they will send you a new one. It's that easy. I've taught electronics for 20 years and have worked with these breadboards day and and day out, specifically maintaining a covey of about 50 E&L "Pencilbox" digital trainers. Whenever the breadboards on those trainers showed too much wear and tear, I'd remove them and send them (sometimes 30 at a time) back to E&L and they send me a like number of new ones, no cost to me other than the postage to send the bad boards in.

I prefer the Global Specialties breadboards over the E&L breadboards if I had to choose. Their geometry is better with regard to the supply rails with 0.1" between rails while the E&L boards have 0.15" between the rails, which is odd. Both have Interplex Electronics as the parent company, so probably doesn't matter to them which brand you buy.

Not only do you get the guarantee, but the Global and E&L boards last a lot longer than the imports and can take a lot more abuse.

Dean

 

[para_cavern]

Breadboards are extermerly useful. I would advise that you get one as they are great for planning and testing circuits on. However, occasionaly ic's have a habit of popping out of the holes but apart from that they are perfect in every respect.
p.s I would advise using a ic holder in the breadboard if you want to use ic's as then they wont pop out.

 

[afs87]

Breadboard

Breadboards are extermerly useful. I would advise that you get one as they are great for planning and testing circuits on. However, occasionaly ic's have a habit of popping out of the holes but apart from that they are perfect in every respect.
p.s I would advise using a ic holder in the breadboard if you want to use ic's as then they wont pop out.

Ic's do not pop out on high quality breadboards. I would recomend you purchase a £5 high quality prototype board (this is a more common name for a breadboard and avoids confusion with other boards) from CTS Electronics. If you live in the UK they do fast delivery. Look up their website at: **broken link removed**

 

[Nostrafus]

Me personally, I've got my radio shack'er heh, I know, it's a piece, but I'm only using it until it bites the dust, and then I'm ordering one that has 3220 connectors, that way I can work on the synth schematics I've been eyeing up...