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Yes, 3M makes a fantastic breadboard with very low contact resistance (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/3/3m/300-series-solderless-breadboards https

Yes, 3M makes a fantastic breadboard with very low contact resistance (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/3/3m/300-series-solderless-breadboards https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/3/3m/300-series...) Get one, treat it well, and never look back. As a student I would never have sprung for that price but as a professional it’s a no brainer.

exmadscientist 6y ago
As a professional the price is nothing but the value proposition is questionable. We simply don't use our breadboards very often around here, and when we do it's never for sensitive work. Basically, I've never had a case when I've cared who made our random stock of breadboards. Either they're definitely good enough, or they're definitely bad enough that I need to prototype some other way. (It's common to find that the only circuits I am interested in derisking at the breadboard level are the ones that I can't prototype that way, due to parasitics.) But then, I consider an SOIC-8 package pretty big in our line of work, so what do I know....
- HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
  It's not just you. I haven't seen a breadboard used in professional work in over 20 years. 90% of the time you're going to have to do a PCB layout anyway, so you might as well start there. Even more so since fewer and fewer devices are even made in DIP anymore.
joshvm 6y ago
Hoo wow that's some sticker shock. I recently bought some cheap boards for some students I'm working with and they're absolute rubbish - about £2 each for a half size board. They're from Elegoo who make a lot of knock off Arduino-ware and are prominent on Amazon. The tracks are incredibly tight and I had trouble fitting their own Arduino Micro board into it. Nowadays the cost of getting a board spun up is so cheap, that I don't bother breadboarding much, usually it's just as a means to interface a bunch of breakouts using 0.1" headers. It's useful to keep a bunch of SMT adaptors in stock for testing random SOIC or DFN parts.

exmadscientist 6y ago

As a professional the price is nothing but the value proposition is questionable. We simply don't use our breadboards very often around here, and when we do it's never for sensitive work. Basically, I've never had a case when I've cared who made our random stock of breadboards. Either they're definitely good enough, or they're definitely bad enough that I need to prototype some other way. (It's common to find that the only circuits I am interested in derisking at the breadboard level are the ones that I can't prototype that way, due to parasitics.) But then, I consider an SOIC-8 package pretty big in our line of work, so what do I know....

HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
It's not just you. I haven't seen a breadboard used in professional work in over 20 years. 90% of the time you're going to have to do a PCB layout anyway, so you might as well start there. Even more so since fewer and fewer devices are even made in DIP anymore.

joshvm 6y ago

Hoo wow that's some sticker shock. I recently bought some cheap boards for some students I'm working with and they're absolute rubbish - about £2 each for a half size board. They're from Elegoo who make a lot of knock off Arduino-ware and are prominent on Amazon. The tracks are incredibly tight and I had trouble fitting their own Arduino Micro board into it. Nowadays the cost of getting a board spun up is so cheap, that I don't bother breadboarding much, usually it's just as a means to interface a bunch of breakouts using 0.1" headers. It's useful to keep a bunch of SMT adaptors in stock for testing random SOIC or DFN parts.