Watch out for poor quality MB-102 830 tie point breadboards sold on eBay. Inserting components is difficult because the 5-way contact strips don't have adequate funneling.
By Julian
Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado
Nice video, well done,thanks for sharing it with us 🙂
Separated rails are essential. If an experimenter is working with a transistor or chip amplifier with more than two stages, for example, a resistor and capacitor decoupling is unavoidable to prevent "motorboating". Also, I had to use long nose pliers to enable wire insertion, and needed to alter resistor values on the soldered item, as consequence of tie point ESR. Very enlightening upload from JL. Thanks. 🙂
i'd not class them as 'fake' as theyre not one thing purporting to be something else, like with differently remarked chips, but just cack quality manufacture
Original breadboards should put these in their product features…😳. Features like precision funnel sockets….😀
Notice the numbers are not lined up with the holes? The letters are reversed on each end of the board as well. I just threw two of these in the trash. They are complete garbage.
Many breadboards have split in the middle power rails, sometimes you need more than 2 positive voltages, it's extra flexibility. You can put a jumper in between the rails of those boards to make them one power rail, but can't cut a breadboard power rail of board that have them connected all the way, so need extra breadboard or power rail.
I bought some Elegoo breadboards from Amazon UK October 2022 they were hopeless the holes were much too big / wide open so wires and component leads were a loose sloppy fit poor contact. I much prefer K&H (K and H) boards more expensive but excellent quality plenty available new and used on eBay UK.
Nice, 5+ years later and my first ever breadboards are exactly these. Same color, same upside down/opposite a-j, same offset numbers, same insert issues. Strangely, the holes in the power rails are the exact opposite and most of them won't grip thinner wires at all. Can't complain too much though since the product pictures were accurate.
The split rails were a bit of a trap too. That took me a few minutes to figure out.
The split rail isn't big problem but even so I can't imagine why they did it.
Trouble shooting a circuit is enough of a challenge without an intermittent connection somewhere. Its shooting yourself in the foot. Save $5 and utter $20 worth of profanities. Not a value.
You're buying JUNK from E-bay, clown.
You can also see that none of these have copper or some copper alloy. On my 3M Ace 236 (1987) which I am rebuilding, all the contacts are the copper (alloy?). If they are using steel in these knockoffs, I'd be wondering if rust will happen.
No sign of rust on the 3M board.
Recommend Mr Sharman's detailed review of solderless breadboards. There are particular brands of a consistently (repeatable) quality. Saved me a lot of time and money – I was going nuts using cheap boards with dicey contacts – debugging that issue takes longer than any other. Cheap breadboards will drive you insane, slowly but surely.