Electronics prototyping is an important part of electronics device development. Prototyping means to build and test an early version of) an electronic circuit. Prototyping your product is all about learning. Each time you create a prototype version you will, or should, learn something new. Start with the most simple, low cost way to prototype your product. This posting gives you overview to different ways to build and prototype electronics circuits.
This video reviews several of the electronic circuit prototyping techniques. It is a good overview if many different techniques.
Electronics on the Floor: Five reasons not to use printed circuit boards for projects
How you begin prototyping your product’s electronics depends on what questions you are trying to answer.
If you have broad questions about whether your product will even work, or whether it will solve the intended problem, then you may be wise to begin with an early works-like prototype based on a development kit such as an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. Then wire some external functionality like sensors to it with jumper wires and/or add-on boards as needed.
If there are no big questions about your product’s functionality then for professional electronics design you should probably move right to designing a custom PCB. Most large companies developing products begin with a custom PCB. This is the fastest route to market, although not likely the cheapest. If you are an electronics hobbyist or need to build one-off device for a specific use quickly, then some other methods might be more suitable.
Alligator clip test cables
Wires with alligator clips are useful in electronics lab for making temporary connections. Those alligator wires can be used to make simple temporary circuits when you need to connect just few components together.
Alligator Clips Electrical DIY Test Leads
Alligator Clips – Electrical Tutorial – HWFCI
How sucks the cheap alligator clip compared with the 10 times price one
Hook Test Leads vs Alligator Clip
Jumper wires
Dupont type jumper wires are extremely handy components to have on hand, especially when prototyping with a development kit such as an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. Jumper wires are simply wires that have connector pins at each end, allowing them to be used to connect two points to each other without soldering. You can use them to connect easily development kit boards together, to breadboard or to sensors.
#12 Five Tricks for working with Dupont wires
Arduino Prototyping Basics #17: Jumper Wires
Arduino prototyping basics Using jumper wires 3/8
Breadboard
Many electronics projects use something called a breadboard. A breadboard is a rectangular plastic board with a bunch of tiny holes in it. These holes let you easily insert electronic components to prototype. It is easy to push in wired component and it is easy to remove a component if you make a mistake, or just start over and do a new project. The term breadboard comes from the early days of electronics, when people would literally drive nails or screws into wooden boards on which they cut bread in order to connect their circuits. Luckily today there are better options. Modern breadboards are made from plastic, and come in all shapes, sizes, and even different colors. Read How to Use a Breadboard for more information.
How to Use a Breadboard
Cutting Perfect Jumper Wires (for breadboard)
Point to point wiring
Point-to-point or hand wiring is traced back to the time when electrical assemblies employed wire nuts or screws to hold wires to an insulated ceramic or wooden board. The modern version of point-to-point construction uses tag boards or terminal strips. It involves soldering components to the electrical assembly.
Point-to-point circuit board wiring is ideal when building a prototype or a customized, one-of-a-kind board. Point-to-point circuit board, which in essence is a hand-wired board. It has low capacitance between conductors since the connections are separated by air. Point to point wiring can be seen typically on tube amplifiers and simple DIY circuits.
Dead bug prototyping
Dead bug prototyping is a way of building working electronic circuits, by soldering the parts directly together, or through wires instead of the traditional way of using a printed circuit board (PCB.) This type of circuit is often a quick way to get going on a project, and is a good way to test stuff, before investing in printed circuit boards. You are often making interesting looking 3D circuits, rather than 2D circuits.
Freeform circuits
Freeform electronics are a way of building working electronic circuits, by soldering the parts directly together, or through wires instead of the traditional way of using a printed circuit board (PCB.) You are often making interesting looking 3D circuits, rather than 2D circuits.
What is a freeform circuit sculpture? It is the art of creating a sculpture from electrical components using brass rods or wire to build the circuit into form. This is an aesthetically pleasing and highly compelling practice that typically doesn’t include circuit boards or enclosures, although they are sometimes still used. Web pages Dead Bug Prototyping and Freeform Electronics and Twelve Circuit Sculptures We Can’t Stop Looking At have nice looking artistic examples of this kind of circuits.
Freeform Circuitry // #TBT
Veroboard
Veroboard is a brand of stripboard, a pre-formed circuit board material of copper strips on an insulating bonded paper board which was originated and developed in the early 1960s. It was introduced as a general-purpose material for use in constructing electronic circuits and is very useful for constructing small to medium size prototype circuits. The generic terms ‘veroboard’ and ‘stripboard’ are now taken to be synonymous. In using Veroboard, components are suitably positioned and soldered to the conductors to form the required circuit. Breaks can be made in the tracks and jumper wires are added as needed. The versatility of the veroboard/stripboard type of product is demonstrated by the large number of design examples that can be found on the Internet.[
Circuit Board Prototyping: Breadboards, Padboards, Stripboards and More
Manhattan style circuit construction
“Manhattan Style” is a technique for constructing electronic circuits by gluing pads or traces to make “islands” of separate conductivity on top of a base material. The “Manhattan style” is a very old method of circuit construction. It’s especially popular among radio amateurs for high frequency circuits because it has a solid ground plane that helps to reduce interference and noise. To build Manhattan style you need a copper clad board (one-sided is OK). The first step is to make small cutouts in the copper for the component pads and cut the board to a good size. Some builders do not make cutouts, but glue small pieces of circuit boards on the copper to get “isolated islands”. Cut out small pieces of copperboard (from another piece of board) and glue them onto the main copperboard to serve as component mounting platforms.
Extreme prototype board wiring techniques
Printed circuit boards
Printed circuit boards are the norm in most modern electronic products. A printed circuit board electrically connects, through mechanical support, electronic components through the use of conductive tracks or pads etched from sheets of copper that are laminated into a non-conductive substrate. Electrical components, such as capacitors and resistors, are then soldered onto the printed circuit board. Typically printed circuit boards are designed with PCB design software and manufactured by circuit board manufacturing companies. But it is also possible to make your own circuit boards.
Making of PCBs at home, DIY using inexpenive materials
DIY PCB Toner Transfer (No Heat) & Etching
366 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://m.pcbway.com/?from=targeted2021&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-dDP7ey6hgMV0_Q7Ah3Y4gdAEAEYASAAEgJ-sfD_BwE
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tommy Nielsen’s Sandwizz Turns KiCad Projects Into Wire-Free Breadboard Prototypes
Just upload a netlist to the Sandwizz Breadboard and it’ll tell you exactly where each component needs to go — all without jumper wires.
https://www.hackster.io/news/tommy-nielsen-s-sandwizz-turns-kicad-projects-into-wire-free-breadboard-prototypes-0a9545402845
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/20/watch-sls-3d-printed-parts-become-printed-circuits/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed Electronics Breadboard
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/25/3d-printed-electronics-breadboard/
Does it make sense to make your own breadboards rather than purchasing off the shelf ones? As [Chuck Hellebuyck] notes in a recent video on DIY, 3D-printed breadboards, there’s a certain charm to making a breadboard exactly the size you need, which is hard to argue with. The inspiration came after seeing the metal breadboard spring clips on sale by [Kevin Santo Cappuccio], who also has a 3D printable breadboard shell project that they fit into. This means that you can take the CAD model (STEP file) and modify it to fit your specifications before printing it, which is what [Chuck] attempts in the video.
The models were exported from TinkerCAD to Bambu Lab Studio for printing on a Bambu Lab A1 Mini FDM printer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/22/3d-printing-a-wire-wrap-tool-emergency-fix-or-permanent-solution/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/22/the-tiny-toolkit-manifesto/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Print A Stenciling Frame For Your PCB
https://hackaday.com/2024/10/03/3d-print-a-stenciling-frame-for-your-pcb/
For many a hacker, stenciling a board for the first time is a game-changing experience – the solder joints you get, sure do give your PCB the aura of a mass-manufactured device. Now, you might not get a perfect print – and neither did [Atul R]. Not to worry, because if you have a 3D printer handy, he’s showing you how to design a 3D-printed frame using Blender and TinkerCAD, making your solder paste print well even if you’re trying to rest a giant stencil on top of a tiny board.
Application Of Solder Paste Simplified
https://esccrasci.in/application-of-solder-paste-simplified/
Recently, I have been working on the muNico 32 which is a custom form-factor of development boards while development on the PicUNO has been halted temporarily due to many regulatory factors while the board continues to undergo testing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Towards Solderless PCB Prototyping
https://hackaday.com/2024/10/06/towards-solderless-pcb-prototyping/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/10/06/towards-solderless-pcb-prototyping/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Brand-New Additive PCB Fab Technique?
https://hackaday.com/2024/10/27/a-brand-new-additive-pcb-fab-technique/
Usually when we present a project on these pages, it’s pretty cut and dried — here’s what was done, these are the technologies used, this was the result. But sometimes we run across projects that raise far more questions than they answer, such as with this printed circuit board that’s actually printed rather than made using any of the traditional methods.
Starting with a naked sheet of FR4 substrate, they drilled out all the holes needed for their PCB layout. Most of these holes were filled with rivets of various sizes, some to accept through-hole leads, others to act as vias to the other side of the board. Fine traces of solder were then applied to the FR4 using a modified CNC mill with the hot-end and extruder of a 3D printer added to the quill. Components were soldered to the board in more or less the typical fashion.
Also, how do you solder to solder? They seem to be using a low-temp solder and a higher temperature solder, and getting right in between the melting points. We’re used to seeing solder wet into the copper traces and flow until the joint is complete, but in our experience, without the capillary action of the copper, the surface tension of the molten solder would just form a big blob. They do mention a special “no-flux 96S solder” at 24:20; could that be the secret?
Project Binky – Episode 39 – Austin Mini GT-Four – Turbocharged 4WD Mini
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy2_CUBz40A
Tomi Engdahl says:
Massive 20-oz. Copper PCB Enables Electric Racing
https://hackaday.com/2016/12/16/massive-20-oz-copper-pcb-enables-electric-racing/
Is twenty times the copper twenty times as much fun to work with? Ask [limpkin] and follow along as he fabricates a DC/DC block for a Formula E race car on 20-oz copper PCBs.
The typical boards you order from OSH Park and the like usually come with 1-ounce copper – that’s one ounce of copper cladding per square foot of board. For those averse to Imperial units, that’s a copper layer 34 micrometers thick. [limpkin]’s Formula E control board needs to carry a lot of current, so he specified 700-micrometer thick cladding, or 20-oz per square foot. The board pictured cost $2250, so you’d figure soldering on the components would be an exotic process, but aside from preheating the board, [limpkin] took it in stride. Check out the image gallery of the session and you’ll see nothing but a couple of regular high-wattage soldering irons, with dirty tips to boot.
https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/5i9wxd/i_just_received_my_20_ounce_pcb_soldering_is/?rdt=52643
Tomi Engdahl says:
Getting Ugly, Dead Bugs, And Going To Manhattan
https://hackaday.com/2016/05/04/getting-ugly-dead-bugs-and-going-to-manhattan/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Circuit Graver Is a Desktop CNC That Can Etch PCBs with Precision
Owing to the lack of a rotating spindle, Zach Fredin’s machine can comfortably carve features down to six mils in size.
https://www.hackster.io/news/the-circuit-graver-is-a-desktop-cnc-that-can-etch-pcbs-with-precision-3c03b714dd73
Tomi Engdahl says:
Modular Breadboard Snaps You Into Benchtop Tidiness
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/02/modular-breadboard-snaps-you-into-benchtop-tidiness/
Solderless breadboards are a fantastic tool for stirring the creative juices. In a few seconds, you can go from idea to prototype without ever touching the soldering iron. Unfortunately, the downside to this is that projects tend to expand to occupy all the available space on the breadboard, and the bench surrounding the project universally ends up cluttered with power supplies, meters, jumpers, and parts you’ve swapped in and out of the circuit.
In an attempt to tame this runaway mess, [Raph] came up with this neat modular breadboard system. It hearkens back to the all-in-one prototyping systems we greatly coveted when the whole concept of solderless breadboards was new and correspondingly unaffordable.
[DIY] Modular Breadboard Holders & Instrumentation
https://raphtronic.blogspot.com/2024/11/diy-modular-breadboard-holders.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.io/project/197705-modular-measure-pcb-ruler
Tomi Engdahl says:
Use Your Resin 3D Printer to Fabricate PCBs
Stephen Hawes has a great video demonstrating a technique for making custom PCBs using a Formlabs SLA resin printer.
https://www.hackster.io/news/use-your-resin-3d-printer-to-fabricate-pcbs-2e3699345208