With all the PCB CAD programs and quick turn PCB service bureaus available why breadboard? These days why not just capture the schematic(s) provided in the application notes for the silicon part of interest, lay out the PCB traces automatically through a CAD program, submit it to a PCB board house and then in a couple days when the board arrives, spend a few hours soldering the parts to the PCB?

Our answers are confidence, time and flexibility. Data sheets can be wrong, so that captured schematic from the application note could be the beginning of a lot of headaches. It is much faster to breadboard a circuit than layout a PCB and populate it with the components. "What if"-ing the design is much easier to do when breadboarding. At Maramil, we like to use solderless breadbroading. Wire-wrapping is another breadboading method. The reasons we don't usually use wire-wrap breadboarding: it is time-consuming, it is easy to misroute a wire and difficult to track down and most passive components do not have square posts as leads. To wire-wrap effectively, the wire needs to be wrapped around a square post. Otherwise the connection could be intermittent. All of Maramil's SMD to DIP adapter kits are supplied with square post leads, which work well with both solderless and wire-wrap breadboarding.

An advantage that wire-wrapping has over solderless breadboarding is that it is easier to have a ground plane. The ground plane can help reduce the signal noise in the system. Another advantage in wire-wrapping is that the point to point wire lengths are probably going to be smaller than those in a solderless breadboard.

Solderless breadboarding is going to be a less effective prototyping method as the analog and digital frequencies of the circuit go up. Trying to prototype a 100 MHz circuit on a solderless breadboard is probably going to introduce a lot of glitches and noise unless special steps are taken. A 100 MHz circuit could probably be wire-wrapped using a wire-wrap board that has a ground plane.

But many microcontroller circuits don't need to run that fast and many of its interfaces can run in the kHz range, so solderless breadboarding works well. Amateur radio operators have been building high frequency transmitters and receivers for decades using breadboarding techniques. The etymology of the term "breadboarding" originated with amateur radio.

SMD has a been a great benefit to both the manufacturers and consumers of electronic products, it allows for smaller, lighter weight active components which creates smaller, lighter weight devices. It is difficult to breadboard SMD as the leads aren't on the standard 0.100 inch [2.54mm] spacing like DIP packages. Many manufacturers are moving away from offering any DIP packages for their components; it isn't worth setting up fab to build this package when it has limited appeal in this age of the ever shrinking electronic device.

Maramil has stepped in to offer some relief for developers. Our SMD to DIP Adapter kits give developers the best of both worlds: work out the design with breadboard friendly DIP lead spacing and then use the same SMD package when the prototype and production PCBs are made.