From concept to breadboard… to something more permanent.

I love to tinker and make all-things electronic. Sometimes… in the journey, something gets lost in translation from one stage to another.

These mini breadboards (above) are so cute! They’re great to work with on smaller projects. That is… until you’re ready to move-on to something bigger or make it permanent… the lack of positive and negative rails means that you might let the blue smoke out of something when transferring your ratsnest to a new home. Not fun.

So… it’s obvious that the engineers at Adafruit have felt the pain too – feast your eyes (above/below) on the Perma-Proto Breadboard!

Turn the Perma-proto over, and you’ll see that it looks just like the inside of a mini breadboard. They come in all kinds of sizes, but lets focus on the 1/4 sized version for now.

MINI BREADBOARD Y U HAVE NO RAILS!

Ok… lets fix that – with some breakaway female headers.

Grab your trusty flush diagonal cutters.

Count up 18 holes… and remove the pin from the back.

Center your cut – so you don’t damage the rest of the headers.

Trim the rough bits.

Sharp tools rule!

Nice.

Grab your wire strippers and a length of stranded wire.

Strip away four or so inches of insulation.

Pull out a strand…

Anchor the strand on your first pin.

Braid the strand through the pins.

When you get to the end, loop back – making a crisscross pattern.

Trim off what’s left.

Carefully trim the header pins down.

Next… we need venom of basilisk (Flux Pen).

Just a little dab here and there so that the solder will flow easily from the pin to the copper strand.

Just like that.

Looks ok… but needs some insulation.

Yes – electrical tape comes in liquid form. I got mine from Lowes.

Dibble-dabble liberally over your solder joint and let dry; you might need to add a second coat.

After drying, grab some double-sided foam tape.

Trim.

Grab a ham sammich… er… peel the protective film off.

Stick onto the mini protoboard.

Wash, rinse, and repeat until you have all the rails you need.

It’s not as pretty as the Perma-Proto… but at least we’ll be talking apples-to-apples when it comes time to make things permanent.