Using 3D Printed Breadboards to Accommodate Wide Boards

Diablo

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wide-mcu-breadboard_examples.jpg


Although off-the-shelf breadboards are plentiful and cheap, they almost always seem to use the same basic design. Although you can clumsily reassemble most of them by removing the voltage rail section and merging a few boards together, wouldn’t it be nice if you had a breadboard that you could stick e.g. one of those wide ESP32 development boards onto and still have plenty of holes to poke wires and component leads into? Cue [Ludwin]’s 3D printable breadboard design that adds a big hole where otherwise wasted contact holes would be.

The related Instructables article provides a visual overview of the rationale and the assembly process. Obviously only the plastic shell of the breadboard is printed, after which the standard metal contacts are inserted. These contacts can be ‘borrowed’ from commercial boards, or you can buy the contacts separately.

For the design files there is a GitHub repository, with breadboard designs that target the ESP32, Raspberry Pi Pico, and the Arduino Nano. An overview of the currently available board designs is found on the Hackaday.io project page, with the top image showing many of them. In addition to the single big space design there are also a few variations that seek to accommodate just about any component and usage, making it rather versatile.
 
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