I've been asked that - I did at the time - and am well aware that it does s eparate the practical from the less practical.
Being short-sighted helps with tiny things. I take off my spectacles to wor k with SMD parts ...
I got my wood-working skills early, but glass-blowing and fine soldering as a graduate student, so I'm a bit sceptical about that claim.
You may need early practice to develop fine motor skills in the hands - but I got what I needed from meccano, woodwork and building model aeroplanes.
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Working out which one is the right hole can be tricky. My experience sugges ts that anything that develops manual dexterity is good enough - and since I'm left-handed, sinisterity seems to be good enough, though left-handers a re probably more accurately described as either-handers.
Yikes. Of course the number of nasty kludges onboard your average ship makes that a drop in the bucket.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
I never understood stripboard; it's such a mess electrically, leaving loose antennas hanging off the end of basically every node. I'd always preferred pad-per-hole, but even better, copper clad once I got used to it.
That's another thing, copper clad doesn't work well for ICs. Sure you can "dead bug" them, but I don't trust myself to make sense of the pins upside down. I usually cut and notch strips of PCB, so I have pads to solder the IC leads to (folding them out like gull-wing SO's, except I suppose it's not small, but a LOIC).
That one runs up to a few hundred kHz (I forget exactly; it's not terribly important as it varies with operating level, too), with harmonics into the
10s of MHz. An arguably advantageous aspect of those discrete designs: since their loop gain is limited on account of the number of active devices, they don't make harmonics too high. Switching speed and efficiency is still fine, but it just doesn't push things crazily fast.
Kind of like that LT "low noise" part with all the slew rate control, except I don't need a complicated freaking IC to do it, it just does it on its own.
I have two advantages: I usually use the stuff with pairs of buses, so I can get low inductance. The other is, if I've wired it correctly, then stabbing a bypass cap in the local area will do nothing.
Most of these kinds of situations, you can clip the scope probe to its ground lead, and prod the circuit with the grounded probe. If you see transients, you're picking up common mode: some part of the circuit is producing a reaction against, probably the power cable, or maybe radiating into space.
If you're reading the same transient, but it appears on a signal, it's illusory. For example, you'll read that transient at the ground side of a shunt resistor, because it's not coming from the resistor (at least, not directly and locally). You'll read it at the active end too, but it's just as illusory.
Wherever I'm probing, if that transient changes by adding bypass, then I can keep moving it closer to the offender and fix it. If not, I can safely ignore it, because it's not that it's actually in the circuit, it just looks like it's everywhere.
So, an unexpected benefit, perhaps, is becoming an EMC expert too. ;-) Or maybe I'm just such a bizarre person that I see fields where no one else does, and therefore my breadboards magically can work out a decade higher than anyone else's...
Curious, you have such disdain for them, yet you don't consider torturing them as entertainment? :-)
In this case, you are correct, it would've taken as long. But, wires in the breadboard can be moved around in seconds, without soldering or cutting. So I got where I wanted to go, much faster than soldering. Then I soldered it,
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spending less time assembling than I would've otherwise, because I already completed the layout.
(Heh, breadboard in the frame is unrelated. Actually, IIRC it is functionally the core of a UC3808, which I wanted to try then and there, without having to order a tube of the real parts and wait. Curiously, the real UC3808 produces equal alternating pulse widths, while this version had an imbalance not unlike the limit cycle of a UC3842 in CCM with no slope compensation.)
I use dikes to gouge the bottom of the chip at the pin-1 end, which is all you really need--otherwise it's just like debugging a board upside-down, which we all had to do in the through-hole days.
I occasionally use Vector 8007, which has the colander ground plane and pad-per-hole. It works OK except that the protos are flakier than dead bug and much much slower to build. Dead bug rules.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
Have you thought to frame retired breadboards and sell them as pieces of art?
I was lazy with the Dremel and used unetched copperclad FR4 as ground plane with dead-bug mounted components on it. Of course, it is not well suited for surface-mount components, but they are too hard for old eyes anyway.
The electronic components shrink at the same speed as the eyes get worse with age.
For some things they are very handy, and they should not be dismissed out of hand.
Things like common inductance in supply and ground lines are valuable to learn about anyway. If you really understand these, then you can make a surprising range of things work on a solderless breadboard. Still, for a beginner I would avoid solderless breadboards for switching power supplies, anything with ac signals under 10mV, anything operating above about 5MHz, anything that needs really low capacitance or leakage, etc.
- What I usually do is build the "difficult" part (switcher, RF VCO, sub-picoamp sample-and-hold stage, etc.) with solder on a little piece of copperclad FR4, maybe with tinplate shielding, and then put short wires (pins) on that stage and plug it into the solderless breadboard as a component. The mundane, non-critical supporting parts of the circuit (dc offset adjustment, power regulators, status LEDs, etc.) can then be built very rapidly on the solderless breadboard.
For low frequency op-amp circuits, low-speed digital designs, PIC microcontrollers, etc. they are great, mostly because you can try out modifications in seconds rather than minutes.
To avoid frustration I suggest never sticking anything bigger than a 1/4 watt resistor lead into the holes (so e.g. I have a stock of power transistors and zeners with little bits of resistor lead soldered to the pins). It is also important to cut the leads of your resistors to get them off the bandolier, so that the part with glue residue from the tape doesn't go in the holes and gum them up with insulating glue. It probably isn't a good idea to borrow or lend a solderless breadboard unless the other person also adheres to those rules. Another thing to watch out for is the solderless breadboards that come screwed to an aluminium plate - had one where the screws touched the contacts inside the breadboard causing inexplicable connections between parts of the circuit. I think the double-sided foam tape that is used to stick down most of the breadboards would be safer than the screws.
No. I keep them for future reference. The plastic breadboards are generally reused, so the original circuit is lost.
We assign a project number to each breadboard, and document it in the J:\Protos folder on a server. We include schematic (usually a whiteboard photo), pics of the actual hardware, scope shots, measurements, notes, whatever. That can turn out to be useful years later. If something else needs to me measured, the original board is still around.
I do surface-mount breadboards, but I'm a live-bug fan. I use the Bellen adapters for most ICs.
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I've always had mediocre vision. I got a Mantis on ebay and it's a miracle; 0805 parts look big to me now.
A carbide dental burr and a Dremel can do pretty detailed stuff freehand. It takes a bit of practise to get good at it, but it's fun.
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--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
lunatic fringe electronics
The big ships I worked on, container and LASH and tankers, were really pretty good.
One LASH ship throttle control (my first PID design, back in New Orleans) was having intermittent speed runaways, not a good thing when docking 80,000 tons. I rode it from Oakland to San Pedro, guest of the captain. It was a really nice trip down the coast. I found the problem, a loose screw on a terminal strip that carried the feedback tach signal, and the fix was to tighten about 300 screws on all the terminal strips and remind the Chief to do that annually. There's lots of vibration and thermal cycling down there in the engineering room.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
lunatic fringe electronics
Yeah, you sorta have to do that with SMT chips, because otherwise the leads get twisted off easily.
It occurs to me that "Fritzing" is probably derived from "on the fritz". ;)
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
If it's what it seems to be I'll occasionally make a test circuit.
I know people are dissing the white breadboards, but if you're careful to work within their limitations and don't try anything too large, they can be quicker than building up a PCB -- particularly if you're exploring.
--
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com
I'm looking for work -- see my website!
I haven't used that white breadboard stuff since the early '70's when I had trouble with a circuit running at the horrendous frequency of
40kHz ;-)
I rarely breadboard today, since chips are rather high on the device count. When I must, I use this sort of breadboard...
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I'm looking for work... see my website.
I prototyped a microprocessor circuit on one. A very long time ago.
And a radio receiver. Also a very long time ago. A guy I worked with for a very short period of time claimed to have built satellite receiver front-end on one -- and he was a successful consultant, so I can't completely dismiss his story.
Mostly today if I'm going to use one it's either because I need some sub- audio op-amp circuit for a test, or because I want to verify that some peculiar thing I'm doing really agrees with SPICE (again, at low frequencies). Production circuits just get a PCB.
--
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com
I'm looking for work -- see my website!
Actually, the whole concept is wrong. Products should be designed, not fiddled. We only breadboard to evaluate an underspecified part or a bit of a tricky circuit, and the breadboard is NOT the prototype of an entire product.
Bob Pease's classic hairball is way over the top. It shouldn't be necessary to breadboard that much stuff. Besides, breadboarding a hundred parts wastes too much time; it's better to do the design right and lay out the final-product PC board. Of course, Pease hated computers so he couldn't simulate.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement
jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Even if you can't or won't simulate, you should still be able to breadboard the bits, and then glue the bits together after some pencil- and-paper math.
--
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com
I'm looking for work -- see my website!
Between undergrad and grad school, I took a couple of years off to go build satellite telecom equipment. (I got stupid lucky--I had a brand new physics and astronomy degree, and only a hobby electronics background, but they took a chance on me.) I built 2/3 the timing and frequency control system (*) for the first civilian DBS system dead-bug style on a bunch of pieces of Cu-clad held together with copper tape, including shields with little hinged lids.
Everybody there did that in those days (1981-83), because with taped layouts, board revs were very painful and good circuit simulators weren't available for circuits that complicated.
(The boards worked great, eventually. First two PLLs I ever built in my life.)
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
(*) Spacetel, from AEL Microtel. I did the pilot tone generator (PTG) and the master timing & frequency unit (TFU). A couple of other guys did the pilot tone receiver (PTR).
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
As just a hobby I cannot justify the Mantis, but for about $ 190 new Amscope SE400 makes a nice scope of 10 and 20 X that makes working with the small parts very easy for me to see at 66 years old.
I have built a few simple things using the Dremel tool and burrs. Not too bad once you get the hang of it.
Den torsdag den 9. juni 2016 kl. 18.24.10 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin: snip
When MAN B&W came out with the first fully computer controlled camless ship engine the made an app note on ship engine electronics.
One of the things in it I hadn't thought of was that all the unused screws on terminal strips should be tightened. In tests they had problem with lose screws creating brass dust with vibration
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