Solderless breadboard to PCB
There are two types of transferring a solderless breadboard layout to a PCB. The first on is the simplest one and that is to use a printed circuit board that has the same layout as the breadboard.
By that I mean it is the same size and has the strips in the same place as the breadboard. You just have to replicate where the breadboard components go in the PCB. This time you solder them in place.
Information
Where would electronics be without soldering? Unbelievably, the modern soldering iron was patented way back in 1896 by Richard Schneider and August Tinnerhol and was known as an “Electric heating apparatus”.
Why would you want to convert a solderless breadboard to PCB?
To make the circuit permanent and to free up the breadboard for another project or experiment. That’s what it’s meant for after all.
While they are great for testing and trying out a circuit they aren’t that good when moved around. Wires can work loose and come out. Soldered wires will stay put in the circuit board.
The picture above shows a picture of a project I built a couple of years ago. It is a MIDI file player and it started out on a breadboard. Once I had finalised the circuit, including the add-on card reader (the blue PCB) I laid out the circuit for a PCB and had it made.
The easiest way to go from breadboard to PCB
You need to be able to solder first. If you can’t I have an article Learn how to solder – A beginners guide.
You will need a soldering iron or soldering station. If you don’t have either check out my articles.
Best soldering irons and Best soldering stations.
You will also need the printed circuit boards. I have a link below if you’re not sure what you’re looking for.
The easiest way to take a breadboard circuit and transfer it to a printed circuit board is to get a pack of the above PCBs that are the same layout as the breadboard. There are quite a few different ones available and if you’ve only used a small section of the solderless breadboard you can also get half-size breadboard layout PCBs
The traditional way tells you to take out a component and solder it in place on the PCB but I don’t think that’s a very good way at all, especially for a beginner. I prefer to leave the breadboard circuit alone and just build the PCB up on its own.
It’s not as strange as it may initially sound. What if you transfer each component over one by one and then your PCB version doesn’t work? With my method, you still have a working circuit on your solderless breadboard and you only take that to pieces once the PCB version is working.
I know people will say you need to get more components and that is correct. You don’t need to double up on all the components, only the cheapest ones. The most expensive things will more than likely be the ICs but we will just be unplugging them and reusing them. Also, we wouldn’t use those wires that plug in the solderless breadboard anyway.
Breadboard wire links
With my method, you leave the solderless breadboard circuit alone. Take the PCB and put all the wire links in first. There will be several links that even if you made them with longer wires in the solderless circuit, can just be replaced with tinned copper wire. Look to make them short and direct. Then solder in the wires for the ones that are longer.
Don’t use single-core wire, use the stranded stuff. You can get it cheaply enough to get all the standard colours. Stick to the same colours you used for the wires on the solderless breadboard. It will make checking it far easier. You will only be using very small lengths anyway.
If you are a beginner and not used to stripping wires check out my guide. This will save you a lot of time and trouble. How to strip a wire.
So far you will have just used tinned copper wire and the coloured stranded wire. You will literally be talking about a few pence worth of wire.
Always use sockets for your IC’s
The next stage is to solder in IC sockets where the ICs are plugged into the solderless breadboard. Again this won’t add to the cost either as you weren’t going to solder the ICs into the PCB, were you?
Tip – Always use IC sockets
The cost is minuscule compared to the ICs and there’s no easier way to check if an IC is working.
You just unplug it from a socket and plug it into another one.
The only time I would ever think of not using sockets was if I’d got a circuit that was prone to vibration. Even then I’d get everything working with socketed ICs and then take the sockets out and solder the ICs in.
Back to the story then, so now we’ve got a PCB with short tinned copper wire links, some coloured wires and IC sockets soldered in. Next, put the resistors in the PCB and solder them in.
Don’t take the originals out, just use new ones. Again they are so cheap, a few pence and you can cut them to the correct size for the permanent PCB. When you take the solderless breadboard circuit apart you’ll have the originals to use again anyway, and with long leads.
Do exactly the same and solder the capacitors in the PCB and then any other components there might be until you have all the components in place except the ICs.
Recheck your circuit works
Power up the original solderless breadboard circuit again just to check it works. This will confirm that no leads or components have fallen out because you want to confirm everything is still working for the last stage.
If everything works on the breadboard carefully unplug the ICs and plug them into the PCB sockets. Power up and you should have a working PCB circuit. The same as the breadboard, if it doesn’t work you must have put something in the wrong place but you still have a working breadboard version to look at and compare.
If your PCB version doesn’t work it’s about 99 percent certain down to putting a component or lead in the wrong place. You just have to go through the wires first then the components until you find it.
So going back to the technique that everybody else teaches you of taking the breadboard apart component by component. If you had done that you wouldn’t have anything to compare to and fault finding would be much more difficult.
I mentioned at the beginning of the article that there are a couple of methods of making the breadboard circuit permanent on a PCB. The method shown above is the easiest.
You could if you wanted build the circuit on the stripboard, now you’ve verified that the circuit diagram you built it from is of a working circuit.
Why would you build it on a stripboard?
In a word, size, you will likely be able to lay the design down on a piece of stripboard much smaller than the size of the breadboard PCB.
If you’ve never designed a circuit on stripboard before there are a few software applications that can help you.
you can read about veroboard and stripboard layout software here.
I also have a guide to designing circuit diagrams to stripboard here that will give you some useful tips.
Design your own PCB
This is also an option and the hardest of the three, but once you can lay out your own circuit on a PCB you will have learned a very useful skill and you’ll have moved to the next step of electronic construction. Designing a PCB from the circuit is also the smallest you will get it as you can squeeze all the components a lot closer with a PCB design.
This is a subject for another article so if it’s something you’re interested in I have an article How to design a PCB which includes some tips to help you get started.
Final thoughts and summing up.
As you can see there are a few methods to making your solderless breadboard to PCB project permanent. If you’re just starting out in this hobby you can use the easiest way but as you become more proficient you will probably want to design your own PCB. Hopefully, I’ve helped point you in the right direction and give you a few tips to help.
Also check out my post, Breadboards – the complete guide, for everything you need to know about breadboards.
“Hi, I’m Graham Moore and I’ve been building electronic projects since I was 12. I had a fascination for old radios and taking them to pieces but when my Nan bought me an electric soldering iron, I realised with a few components I could build stuff.
Learning to solder opened up many doors for me as electronics also became a career. I hope you get as much from it as i did”.
