Bread Board

Breadboard serves as the base for designing the prototypes of the electronic circuits. Since the breadboard is solderless it is possible to make temporary circuits, thus providing you the flexibility to change the connections as and when required. The breadboard has an advantage over the stripboard (used in earlier days) and also the printed circuit board because these two are somewhat difficult to reuse. The Breadboard is extremely handy when it comes to modeling simple electronic circuits as well as quite complex electronic circuits.

Generally, a solderless breadboard comes with a plastic coating and beneath this coating, there are clips made up of certain alloys. And it is these clips with the help of which the connections can be established. The leads of the components and the jumper wires are plugged into these clips. The normal distance between these clips is around 0.1 inches.

Since breadboard doesn’t require any soldering we can directly plug the components into the holes present on the breadboard. If you consider a typical rectangular breadboard then you will notice that the topmost and the bottom most section of holes are connected horizontally and are oftenly called as power rails, since they are used for providing power supply. However, the holes that are present on the middle section of the breadboard are connected vertically and are used to plug in the actual components. These are oftenly called as terminals. The separation in the middle of the breadboard can be used to connect DIP ICs.

So if you wish to build a circuit then you need to plug in the components and connect them with various other components using jumper wires such that a well defined circuit is formed connecting the negative as well as the positive ends. And when you switch on the power supply you will be able to see the output of the designed circuit. If you don’t get the desired output, then simply try to identify the mistake and alter the circuit accordingly so as to get the desired output.

Limitations

• Solderless breadboards permit only a limited value of current and voltage
• Solderless breadboards operate at relatively low frequencies
• It is not possible for solderless breadboard to accommodate components with more than 0.1 inches grid spacing (i.e. surface mount technology devices)