Was about to put my breadboard back into its drawer now I am done designing the
Fridge Timer (tm).Then this breadboard reminded me how crap it was : the binding posts all came lose, came off the board !
![Scared :scared:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/scared.gif)
The small 3mm screw at the back that keeps the center piece in place while you loosen the post with your fingers well.. even finger force is way more than than is required to dismantle the assembly and for it to come off the board. In short : it's unusable out of the box. Well nothing knew here. I bought it 5 years ago from Farnell, got the cheapest one they had because money, thinking Farnell wold not dare selling stuff that's so crap that it's unusable., for fear of ruining their reputation in front of their high paying professional customers. How naive that was.... straight out of the box, first use, these binding posts sucked and would not hold together, truly horrifying design and build quality.
Body is made of plastic, but very, very crap / soft plastic. The larger retainer nut at the back, that hold the outer part to the board, is very thin, nit much thread to bite with, and the thread is cut into the plastic body of the post. Since it's crap plastic... you can't really tighten the nut as much as you would want to otherwise the risk of ruining the threaded plastic body is guaranteed.
So I had to find new 3mm nuts for 3 of the 4 posts as they had again vanished, unscrewing themselves at the slightest action of your fingers on the posts.
So I decided to try to improve the fixation... looked into my junk box of Misc small H/W bits and bobs, and found x4 3mm star washers. Put them before the nuts, good twist of the wrench and .... wow, what a world of a difference that made ! Posts are now very well secured, I can undo them and the posts stays in place now, doesn't want to come off of the board. Victory. A small one, but one I appreciate...
I need decent quality binding posts. If any one know of a source with a decent quality for a reasonable price. Like not 10 Euros a piece, that would be good.
Decent quality plastic, and metal thread at the back not plastic. Availability in various colours would be cool as well. Having all black bindings posts on the board is not very easy to tell what's what.
Once I find a decent source for them, might stock a bit on them as these things are useful aren't they...
Now trying to decide on how best to organize all my freshly sorted transistors, to make the best use of space, yet make it easy enough to find something when I need it. It's a trade-off...
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