Why & When?

When a breadboard project becomes more finite and the components are final it makes sense to start moving a project from breadboard to PCB (Printed Circuit Board). Moving a project from a breadboard to a PCB also offers several advantages:

1. Reliability: Breadboards are generally used for prototyping and are not as reliable as a well-designed PCB. By transferring your project to a PCB, you can ensure better connectivity, stability, and resistance to environmental factors.
2. Compactness: Breadboards can become messy and take up a lot of space, especially for complex projects. PCBs allow you to neatly organize and consolidate your components, resulting in a more compact and professional-looking project.
3. Durability: PCBs are designed to withstand mechanical stress, temperature variations, and other factors that can compromise the functionality of a breadboard. This makes them more suitable for long-term use and deployment in real-world applications.
4. Easier Integration: Once your project is on a PCB, it becomes easier to integrate it into a larger system or enclosure. PCBs can be designed with specific dimensions and connectors that align with other components or systems, simplifying the overall assembly process.
5. Scalability: If you plan to replicate or mass-produce your project, a PCB is essential. PCB manufacturing allows for consistent replication of your design, ensuring uniformity and quality across multiple units.
6. Noise Reduction: Breadboards are prone to noise and interference due to loose connections and long wire lengths. PCBs with proper grounding and signal routing techniques can significantly reduce noise and improve the overall performance of your project.

Overall, moving a project from a breadboard to a PCB offers improved reliability, compactness, durability, easier integration, scalability, and noise reduction, making it a logical step for transitioning from prototyping to a more robust and professional implementation.

Time Estimate

As a beginner, I would estimate around 6 hours to do a small project from start to finish (starting with drawing up the schematic). Much of that time will be spent learning how to use the software tools.

After gaining some experience, I would expect around 2-3 hours of work for the same result assuming you are working at a moderate pace.

Word of advice

Make PCBs in modules/segments. It is tempting to make huge PCBs that looks cool and can contain all of your components. However as projects grow the complexity greatly increases and the chances of producing a PCB without schematic/wiring issues is surprisingly low (atleast on the first try). Therefore, breaking up your project in segments and converting each segment into their own PCB allows you to have a lot more flexibility and allows you to test each module independently. And when something goes wrong, you do not need to redo your entire project, but only the segment that failed. Your experiences from producing one segment/PCB will also easily scale and travel to the next one.

The only drawback with this method is that we now need a way of connecting these different segments, and this means that we will have more wires than with a single big PCB. The best way to deminish this is to use semistable connectors such as screw terminals. Screw terminals allows for external wires to be screwed to the connector, securing them against pulling and tugging. This gives them the stability of solder connected wires, while still being able to easily connect and disconnect on demand like a pinheader. In fusion schematic, search for ‘Terminal’. They come in different variations and sizes, but the three pin one is the most abundant. Check in chomskylabs consumable section for the variant availble there.

Prerequisites