Techniques for Prototyping

Breadboarding

The fastest and simplest technique, breadboarding involves using a device that lets you plug components and wires together called a solderless breadboard. 

You cannot do high frequency work on a bread board and they generally are bulky so hard to mount in robots, but they provide a quick way to test out a sensor circuit or a new chip.

Wire Wrap

Extremely popular in the 80's, wire-wrap has fallen out of favor. Special IC sockets with extremely long pins allow you to wrap wires around them for a quick solderless connection. 

On the right is an H-bridge circuit that is built on a board with traces for a PIC microprocessor and then a place to plug in your own circuitry and wire it up. While not as fast as the bread boards, wire wrap can be used for "final" assembly of small quantity projects.

Special tools and power tools can make wrapping go even faster.

Prototype Printed Circuits

Of course the pro's start out with a printed circuit. While possible to make at home with chemicals and pre-treated copper clad circuit boards, a number of services have sprung up on the internet that will take your PCB artwork and make boards and then ship them out the next day. 

Fairly pricey at $60 - $100 for two boards, it does produce a professional result that maximizes the use of the circuit area.

Manually building circuit boards with etchant is a time consuming process but certainly doable. We have several members in the club who have done more than one board "by hand" with varying degrees of success. It is definitely cheaper if you do them your self, but surprisingly not much cheaper. Restrictions on disposal of the chemicals can also make doing PCBs at home not viable.