Many of us use solderless breadboards for prototyping out Moteino projects. I've tried a number of different breadboard suppliers mostly via Ebay and have found the quality varies quite markedly. More often than I'd like, a "problem" with my Moteino project turns out to be caused by the breadboard itself. I've included a photo of just one of the problems I've encountered, poor contact alignment.
I realize that buying imported items like this off of Ebay can be chancy. My question is whether reputable domestic companies like LowPowerLab or Adafruit or others can require from their suppliers consistent standards on specifications like contact resistance and capacitance, contact insertion force and alignment, etc. or is it even for them "the luck of the draw"?
I've run into the problem you're citing, one side of the contact isn't bent far enough out of the way so inserting a pin into the row becomes virtually impossible - the inserted pin jams into the top of the contact, rather than the side. This happened on a 'free' breadboard I received from a supplier as part of another order.
It hasn't ever happened on a breadboard I've purchased from the original source: Circuit Specialists - having purchased from them for decades, I'd say it was a pretty good success rate.
Tom
Interesting that you should mention Circuit Specialists. I used their boards years ago --- breadboard first, then wire-wrap the final version.
I was surprised to see that they are still around and selling breadboards. They appear to be still in the U.S., so I'll ask them the quality control questions I posted in my first message. Amazingly, their prices on breadboards are lower than many of the foreign suppliers.
Don
They are OK for very quick simple projects and blinky type prototyping (digital logic that is immediately obvious).
I would not use breadboards with any circuits where signal integrity is important.
You will inevitably get bitten by a faulty breadboard and the time spent to debug where the problem is, will not be worth it.
I would instead recommend the solderable proto boards for very urgent stuff, and then making a PCB, that's a lot better in many ways and gets your circuit as close as possible to the intended operation and integrity - of course you still need to do a good job soldering TH and SMD components (and then cleanup).
Quote from: DonpK on December 23, 2018, 09:37:30 AM
Interesting that you should mention Circuit Specialists. I used their boards years ago --- breadboard first, then wire-wrap the final version.
The amazing thing is that you can still buy STD bus cards from them! I bought these in the early 80's.
Quote
I was surprised to see that they are still around and selling breadboards. They appear to be still in the U.S., so I'll ask them the quality control questions I posted in my first message. Amazingly, their prices on breadboards are lower than many of the foreign suppliers.
I've built literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of working prototypes using these breadboards and the ONLY time I ever had an issue due to breadboard connections is with the cheap crap I got as a freebee. The contact, if made correctly, is inherently reliable due to its bifurcated configuration (wipes on both sides of the pins). One of my favorite breadboards was a 5 way panel, sitting on a sloped enclosure, that had built-in power supply wired to binding posts at the top of the box - from Circuit Specialists, of course. I'll bet I had close to 50 ICs wired on one prototype.
Sigh, those were the days - want to redesign the circuit? Unplug the wire and move it. Sort of like the best days of programming. Want to change the program? Simply pullout the old cards, stick in the new ones - moving a 'block' of code was trivial...
;D
I do use solderable protoboards for finished projects. But trying to solder and unsolder components, wires and connectors can soon lead to its own set problems. I think the issue with solderless breadboards as Tom points out is not the concept, it's the quality.
If you've continued to get good quality from Circuit Specialists, I'll check them out.
I did some followup on this topic, I would say both Felix and Tom are correct.
I ordered some 400 tie-point breadboards from Circuit Specialists and compared them to a variety of other boards from different sources. Felix is correct, many of the boards from other sources are junk and I've wasted a embarrassing amount time troubleshooting problems that ended up being breadboard-caused.
I compared the Circuit Specialist boards with other suppliers and the quality differences are substantial. I've mentioned the contact alignment problem earlier in this thread, contact resistance is another problem. The contact resistance on all the boards from a major U.S. supplier of Arduino products measured 10 times the resistance of the Circuit Specialist boards and the contact uniformity seems good as well.
I talked with tech support at Circuit Specialists and they told me that have bought their breadboards from the same supplier for twenty years and keep an eye open for quality issues. So at least up to this point, Tom appears to also be correct in his comments.
Quote from: DonpK on February 12, 2019, 02:07:01 PM
So at least up to this point, Tom appears to also be correct in his comments.
Whew! I am SOOOOO relieved! I was concerned that I missed something in the 40+ year experience I've had with these!
I have to hand it to you though, you certainly are thorough!
Thanks for the update. I'll be able to sleep better tonight ;)
Tom