Basic question about a "breadboard"

forget it, I figured it out. ICs should go in the middle.

It's what *everyone* used to use.

You use a cutting tool to break those strips up as required.

It's so intuitive to me that I can't actually think of how to explain it any better.

Graham

The cutting tool is called a "spot face cutter" - usually corrupted to "a spotty-faced cutter". A ggogle search on the proper name produced this

which does provide an explanation, with pictures. It isn't a great explanation - I always solder my integrated circuits directly into strip-board, because the sort of sockets that make good electrical contact with the IC pins ( and maintain good contact for more than a few months) cost rather more than most ICs.

-------------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

If you're talking about the solderless breadboards, AKA "protoboards", the ones made out of white plastic that you plug things into then yes, they're only good for prototyping -- they fail under high current, high vibration, or when the mood strikes them. I find them very useful for small stuff where I know I'm going to have to dink around to get things right.

When used properly a _soldered_ breadboard will last as long as anything else in the world -- but it's much harder to change things around.

They're usually called prototyping board. Radio Shack has some that exactly match the layout of their solderless breadboards which is handy if you have something that works -- you can just transfer the circuit over. If you want something bigger, denser, or higher quality look in the Digi-Key or Mouser catalogs in their "prototyping" section. Vector is the big name, selling "Vectorboard". There's a gazillion options, but I usually look for the ones that have three or four holes/circuit with interlaced ground and power -- these will do for most lower frequency stuff; for RF or high power it's best to just dead bug the thing over unetched copper or lay out a board & send it to a quick turn house.

It isn't even good for that where high current, high dI/dt, or RF is involved.

This sounds nice. Seems like breadboard is no good for anything byt prototyping.

Radio Shack used to sell a regular PCB with the same layout as one of their solderless breadboards... dunno if they still do, though.

I have seen people use solderless breadboards in prototype systems for many months at a time (even a year!), and I've even seen people literally box up solderless breadboards to ship to someone else who needed access to prototype. Obviously this isn't recommended, but my experience has been that the things are somewhat more rugged than you might initially expect.

You can even build single transistor oscillators on the things to better than

Are they called soldered breadboards? Or something else? I would like to buy one.

You see, this thing will operate in a relatively hostile environment, inside of a welding machine with a big cooling fan. Hence some vibration, although not too much. It will house a gate driver that needs to turn gates on and off relatively quickly (sub microsecond). Also there could be some EMI as well.

Hi Ignoramus

No, No, itis NOT the right tool for designing Gateunits. Forget this very quickly. A gate-Unit for bigger IGBT as you want to use should have

as short wires as they can (not possible in a solderless breadboard) as low resistance as possible (not possible in a solderless breadboard) the possibility to give several amperes to the gates (not possible in a solderless breadboard)...

That is the wrong tool for this work.

Marte

"Joel Kolstad" ...

than

Yesterday evening it took a collegue 1.5 hours to build a 1800 MHz TV FM transmitter on breadboard, and it was spot-on (pun intended) first time, good video quality. He added a MAR amplifier today and got a 10 meter reach. Total size was about 1 x 1.5 cm, all components in SMD soldered between pads. A nice demonstration of what you can do with the stuff...

Regards, Arie de Muynck

do you have a picture of the breadboard?

martin

It's ok for debugging the basic oscillator which only runs at a few hundred Hz, but I wouldn't connect it to the welder in case one of the contacts went flaky at the wrong time. As you say, solderless breadboard is no good for the gate driver, the inductance in the gate circuit should be under

Chris

"martin griffith" ...

Should be available this weekend, I'll post a link.

Regards, Arie de Muynck

"martin griffith" ...

Pictures are here:

Arie de Muynck