Breadboard Power Supply - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: andrewrob6
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 28, 2018, 12:24:39 am
content: Newbie here,I have been looking around online and tried various googling attempts to find a way to modify a breadboard with connectors so the buses are powered from underneath. I figured someone here might be able to help. Any advice or links would be appreciated.Background & Vision: I am taking electronics classes in school and have been trying to build up my own little beginners lab at home. At school, we have the NI Elvis II trainers where a few small breadboard panels are connected through the board to 4mm banana jacks on the side. This way the power supplies can be easily connected/removed and all one would have to do is patch them to wherever they want the central breadboard. For my personal boards at home, I just bought a Jameco ValuePro with the banana jacks at the top right corner and would like to find a way to hard wire them under the board to the power buses. it might just be overkill but I frequently get OCD about how I run my wires and prefer to have a few as possible on the actual board. I thought about just simply trying to solder wires to the buses through the back of the board but I was worried about burning the plastic or not being able to put the buses back in. Later on, if I can get this to work I would also want to hook up a BNC connector so I can directly connect my function gen. I wouldn't mind buying one setup already either if I could find one I liked. The standard Elvis board I see is roughly $800 and I would prefer to stay in the ~$100 range till I get my feet on the ground. (Sorry I have a habit of talking a lot even though it is a simple point/idea.)Thanks again.

author: andrewrob6
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 28, 2018, 12:47:45 am
content: Thanks, wilfred. Finals are this week so Asprin is definitely coming soon and I like the pun.The power wires I just want conceal to the power buses on either side. Then I can just run a small jumper to where ever I need them to power the circuit on the board.I'm probably just letting my OCD get the best of me.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 28, 2018, 12:49:03 am
content: Yeah, breadboards tend to get cluttered in use so you probably won't gain much. They're not that expensive though, so maybe buy one and experiment? I wonder how well the contact strips would take solder.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 28, 2018, 01:58:29 am
content: That depends - silver plated ones will probably take solder so well the problem will be keeping the solder off the contact fingers, but cheap nickel plated ones will be virtually unsolderable unless you abrade the plating and use active flux. In all cases it would be prudent to remove the contact strips and clip them on the edge of a thin stiff card to solder them, angled so solder doesn't run straight down the fingers, then thoroughly clean residual flux off before reassembly.However its going to make it very difficult to dismantle for maintenance (e.g. cleaning, or reshaping a damaged contact).IMHO it would be preferable to simply remove the rubber or plastic tape backing, and use anisotropic conductive tape to connect the strips to gold plated pads on a custom PCB without soldering to the breadboard. The potential benefits are fairly high if you enjoy doing large logic builds, as you could easily get a good groundplane + well decoupled power rails.Another option is to use breadboards without rails and make a PCB with Arduino style female headers right next to each breadboard section as rails and near to off board connectors for I/O etc.

author: Vgkid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 28, 2018, 05:29:29 am
content: The NI Elvis , we used quite a few of them. I think we must have had about 30.Onto the power supply , I don't own a solderless breadboard , but I would make use of power bus.breadboard units. I would recomend having three of them (+/-/ground) , and wire them from above. Basically have a ttiple adjustable power supply , though two fixed 12v rails and an adjustable rail would be just as good.