I no longer breadboard projects, because PC boards are so inexpensive and their quality/neatness far exceeds anything I could do on a perfboard. I recently did a small HV supply for nixies; for $21 US I got 3 high-quality PCBs from OSH Park. They charge $5 US per square-inch, which is great for small boards.
A PCB is much more compact than a breadboard, and it allows you to use surface-mount parts which are not only smaller, but also cheaper, than thru-hole devices. While it does take time to do a PCB layout, keep in mind that it takes a great deal of time to manually wire-up each component on a breadboard. Wiring errors, shorts, and open are much less likely on a PCB. Also, having the schematics captured for PCB layout will get you a netlist you can simulate (ie, SPICE), which means you can greatly reduce the amount of experimenting & debugging. All-in-all, I think I spend less time designing+simulating+building+debugging a PCB than a breadboard. Where the big savings come-in is when you need 2 or more boards. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/4842d0b4-bcda-420f-b39f-7a8bca2ddbfb%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
