I started experimenting back in the 70's but being a traveling musician I began to travel more and more and somehow lost touch with my work bench. All these years later in my "retirement" I now have assembled a dream experimenters work bench and started putting together a synthesizer from a few chips and that led to a sequencer and that led to a small set of amps to drive a couple of small speakers, well you get the picture. I wanted to build each part from scratch. What a rat's nest that became on my bread board(s). I then realized that troubleshooting was a nightmare in that nest so I began cutting my leads to fit. But then I ran across your little gadget here. They say genius is the ability to perceive the obvious. I don't know how obvious this is but it is simply genius. I printed mine out and love it!! It is saving me a ton of "fiddling with the wires" time lol! Thank you!!! Anyone who experiments with electronics on a breadboard and has a 3d printer, don't even think about it. Just print this out. You will love it!
Neatness counts! Anecdote: Too many decades ago, I was blessed with the best lab partner in a "Digital Ccts" course. Dave spent his free time "neat-i-fying" our breadboard (a digital volt meter) with custom length, colour coded jumpers (while I focussed on the write-ups.) At the end of the course, the instructor sheepishly approached us with his "woven" rat's nest version, saying, "You guys will have to tear-down a board, returning each of its component to the lab's inventory... Would you swap this one for yours for me to use as a teaching aid for next year's class?... Please...." I imagine Dave's work of art might be still on display at that institute!! Good times! Thanks for rekindling those memories!
@@3nertia One sees T-shirts displaying the NASA logo everywhere... I've concluded mine stands for "Not Another Senior's Anecdote" (Good grief!) 🙂 Unfortunately, about 10 years after grad, we lost contact with one-another. Too many sea-changes. Thankfully, in spite of life being a series of nomadic upheavals, I can look back to recognise there's usually been a talented colleague/mentor showing "a better way". Life's lesson: "Enjoy the journey and the people you meet along the way" ('cuz the destination sucks... big time...) 🤣😂🤣😂 Cheers! 🙂
It is not only the mess. I built a fuzz pedal to a breadboard and use long jumper wires that are dangling all over the place. Fuzz works, but due to stray capacitances and inductances, it also plays some Asian radio 😂
When I was 9 I acquired an old telephone. I had the junction box for the phone lines on my bedroom window. Took a bit of testing but I got it working and hid it in my sock drawer (wasn't allowed my own phone). You'd tap two wires together to make a digit, two taps was a 2 etc. I could make and receive calls but I got the local radio station full volume through the handset 😂 I was so lost with that one.
In 1972 I built a DIGITAL POLYPHASE WATTMETER, on breadboard.for my BSEE senior project. It was Kick A$$ good, but lotsa breadboarding, and your device wouldhave been a GodSend. By the way, 120V, 230V, 460Volts, and 5A, 10A, 20A, 40A and 80 Amps all measured out of a 15 amp, 120Volt classroom wall receptacle. I got one measurement to lie, and 15 others to swear to it! With 0.25% accuracy, ACED THE SENIOR PROJECT, and GRADUATED with honors. (120 watts to 64000 watts full scale from a wall outlet) It was FUN!
This looks really useful! Ever since I saw Ben Eater's video, I've been making my own jumpers. I've gotten good enough to eyeball the length for bus-to-board jumpers. Regarding the problem with insulation on short jumpers - I strip and bend one lead first, and that keeps the insulation in place and makes it a little bit easier to grip the wire when stripping the other end.
Well this is certainly easier than my tried and tested (through school, university and many hobby projects) method of marking the correct length in the insulation by using my nails
This is awesome, I've been making these manually by eye for ages and they're never quite the right length. This print is going to come in super useful!
This is a brilliant tool that you came up with. I'll definitely be printing one for myself (and maybe a few for the local library-based maker space). I think I'll play around with a layer-based color change to make the slot divisions easier to see. Thanx for releasing the STL for free. (I probably would have bought one if you were only selling them, but the library would have missed out on the donation.)
I am surprised why a lot of people won’t wire their breadboard like this. I still take joy in carefully breadboarding my some prototypes. It is fun and it creates a detail map in your mind of the hardware as well.
Nice, I imagine I'll be printing out one of these soon. I like to use wires out of solid core Ethernet cables for breadboarding. They're easy to tuck into tight spaces and you get 8 color/pattern combinations
I agree it's the way to go. The jumper wires with ends you can buy are too fat, so are some components like a 7805 regulator, diodes and the post headers you get with micros. These will mess up your breadboard(makes for loose connections). Be nice to breadboards and don't stuff fat wires in them.
I like the length jig. But the stripping can be accomplished much faster with a stripper that auto sizes to the wire diameter, and has an adjustable end stop for length. These are widely available with either side entry or front entry into the jaws, and not very expensive.
Love this! I came across this video because I thought of making a ruler from some thick paper and laminate it (don’t own a 3D-printer … yet 😅). Would be nice to have a way to measure between two spots directly on the breadboard how long the wire needed to be, for when you don’t yet know the length. I’ve also needed to make wires with 90 degrees corners around the board, and this was pretty tedious to measure.
Pin (hole) spacing on breadboards is pretty much standardized as 1/10 of an inch. (Yes there are some variations, but this is the spacing for most IDC connectors and dual inline pin (DIP) components that get plugged into a breadboard. If you live in any country other than Libya or the US, the spacing is 2.54 mm. So the breadboard sort of acts as a measuring tool to begin with. There are 16 pins on the component? that means it's going to have a component length of (about) 9/10 of an inch (16/2 + ~1) with the variability on the 'about' 1 being the clearance needed to be able to plug DIP's next to each other across the "gap". In my experience the spacing from the bus bar's to the field is either 0 or 1 pin, and the gap in the middle is (again usually) 2 pins. That said, you should be able to take two boards, or if the bus bar parts from the board, and span either gap to get a count. There are exceptions of course. If you are working with an Arduino R3 or earlier board (I don't know if they changed this for R4, but it would likely break hats) the spacing of the pins on the board includes a gap that is not an even multiple of 1/10" across. This is sort of where the dupont connector flexible wires are a good hack for, or go up a pin, and trim to match. I know there are connectors that follow one of the newer 2mm spacing, and you may need to do custom jumpers to bo between the two standards. I do have a 3d printer, (or 9) and will be printing one of these up, (along with a resistor leg form to bend legs without stressing the resistor.) Either as soon as the model I'm printing now is done, or when I get another printer up and running.
At 5:05 I use hot tweezer strippers - they can strip even down to less than a millimeter of remaining insulation if you need it. Very quick and easy to use. Your follow up method of stripping just the remaining insulation and sliding it into place works too. I do that sometimes, but with hot strippers there is no need for that, every wire is stripped using the same technique, so your muscle memory kicks in and you "whip out" wires cut to fit so quickly you don't even remember doing them.
@@kali_muon HOTweezers are a special kind of electric wire stripper. They strip wire using heat for a clean and easy strip. Have you ever tried to strip a tiny piece of wire? Regular strippers require a lot of pulling force and its nearly impossible. These require little to no pulling force. You are supposed to pull off the insulation by hand, but many just pull it off with the stripper. In aerospace and defense we use Teflon coated wire. Teflon is very tough and will not melt from a soldering iron. You can actually rest a soldering iron on the wire jacket and it will do nothing. You can't use regular wire strippers on Teflon - too tough to cut, you have to use Hot Tweezer Strippers. Check out some videos on them... I swear by them. You can often get them used for a good price. Hot Tweezer type strippers can also strip common PVC wire, you just use a low heat setting.
Dunno why this is surfacing now, but this is a great idea. I so often fall back on the bendy jumpers because they're less work than re-aligning stuff so that my limited supply of pre-cut jumpers, but then I end up with a rat's nest board that is impossible to debug or modify... I'm sure there's a bit of practice needed before getting up to speed, but it looks like once up to speed it's not much longer than searching the pre-cuts for the right size, and the results look worth it. Maybe a future version that automatically measures, cuts, and strips?
That is pretty cool tool! Great idea! 👍 Usually, on bigger projects, I run out of jumpers needed size and I have multiple of these jumper wire boxes.. 😂
You need a friend with one or one of the commercial places that will print for you. Else use a ruler to measure and your fingernail to measure the strip length, worked for me for many years. Easier to strip first then bend the stripped end on a hard surface. For short lengths strip one end double length and slide the insulation back to the middle after cutting.
Nice video and tool. I myself only use white wire. It is just cheaper to get a large spool of one color wire (usually that tough Teflon jacket type) than having 10 color spools (the decade colors) or those handy multicolor wire packs. I am going to make a tool based on the Arduino UNO. It will use a stepper motor and pinch wheels to eject and cut a piece of wire to any length based on a keypad entry. Say I need a need a "5-er" (what I call a 5 hole long wire), I simply press 5 and then # on the keypad and a prefect length wire is dispensed. Then I just strip it using hot strippers and just bend the ends by hand. If I need the same length again, I just press # to dispense the same as the last length. I could actually make an auto stripper and even auto bender on it, but that would be a bit elaborate... maybe on a delux model, but at least a length dispenser would be helpful. Let me know... I will post a video. In military protoryping (where I picked up my techniques), we usually use white Teflon jacketed wire for all of our connections. Colors help, but the electrons don't care. In deliverable electronics, the wires are marked with their unique wire number (on a marking/dispensing machine) so they can be indentifed in a harness/bundle if needed. The idea is: Wiring done right very rarely fails, so using one color of high quality wire is all you need, as "buzzing" out failed harnesses are usually done by removing the connectors at both ends and checking each pin... color doesn’t really help... especially in harness with 100's of wires... having multicolor wires with stripes on them - the permutations of wire colors is just not practical and is very expensive. I am surprised the automotive industry does not go the military way... they try to save a penny at every step.
@@jnnewman90 I just coded the Arduino today. I have an Eleegoo Super Starter Kit which has the Ardunio UNO, a 4 Coil Stepper Motor, A Stepper Motor Driver Board, as well as other sensors I don't need for this project. I will build the prototype tomorrow. I will need to get a strong 12V Solenoid that can actuate a wire clipper. I will post some slides tomorrow on my website. It's easy to find, it's just my full name with a dot in between. After I build a prototype, I will post a video on my channel. I recommend getting a Hot Tweezer Stripper that has an adjustable stop so you place the wire to the stop, squeeze the tweezers, and gently pull off the insulation with no effort. It is a must for Teflon wire (that soldering irons won't melt - that is why Teflon is used in military wiring). Get a temperature adjustable Hot Tweezer Stripper so you can use it with lower cost PVC wire that requires a low temperature to strip.
@@Graham_Wideman Actually, bread board wires are relatively short, that is, they don't go into a harness and pop out somewhere else - so color coding (or wire number marking) is helpful. But on a bread board, you can see where each wire runs. True, colored wires may help trace wires, but since you can use tweezers and such to move wires around, color coding is not absolutely needed but it can help in some cases. But your color coding markers on white is a good idea - hard to implement, makes the machine way more expensive, and markers need to be capped when not in use - but a good idea and this is thinking outside the box. I like that kind of thinking.
Late comer here. Downloaded the .STL file, sent it to PCBWay 3D Print. Got it in the mail yesterday. (All five of them). They came out superbly. Watched your awesome video 8 times with template in hand. Works like a charm. It's great that you expanded on Ben's tips and tricks. This will come in very handy. Now, where do I send the "Buy me a coffee/beer"? -d
someone who has been breadboarding since the early 80's i can appreciate the neatness but this is a breadboard and alot of times you need to move jumpers, if they are precut then you need to make more. this is a prototype so neatness isnt a factor, its about making the circuit work. the simplest way is to have a spool of 22 ga and just cut what you need, its quicker, you can tidy up the final later.
Whenever I see videos like this I'm very skeptical, because the title sounds a bit like clickbait. This however delivers on the promise. And it appears to be a handy tool, indeed.
It's a long video because Brits (and sometimes Aussies) are a bit long winded. They like to give you the full back story. I know... because I am told I do the same. That must be the Welch in me... not quite British (I guess) but close enough [smile].
That’s a neat tool, thanks. I was thinking someone might like to make an STL for an IC straightener (I don’t have a printer yet, it’s on my to buy list)
Fussy but brilliant. The color-coding alone would make it worth the effort for breadboards that see a lot of changes to a base circuit, like benchtop robots and guitar pedal experiments.
That's very useful! Thank you! Would you also add the source file, not just the STL, so we can more easily improve it/work on it, please? Btw does it also work with the type of wire strippers that grab the wire in two places and pull on opposite sides?
Nice idea but I'd like to be able to make those wires that go round a chip to connect a pin on one side to a pin on the other more neatly too. Like the one you need to connect pin 2 to pin 6 of a 555.
You should be able to count the number of holes from one pin, around the chip to the other pin, make a wire that long and work out the two (or more) bends required.
@@tonylock7657 The example given (555 timer) works better with the jumper going over the top of the IC, instead of around like you describe. But since the hole spacing is 0.1" pitch, using a ruler marked in 10ths of an inch one can measure the route easily enough.
Material is not overly important as long as it's a rigid material. I mostly print in ABS, but PLA, PETG, ASA or even nylon should be fine. I'd suggest using whatever you have available or whatever is cheapest if you're using a 3d printing service. The only material I can think of to avoid would be TPU, as it's soft and flexible and not really suitable for a bending tool.
I use one of the cheap black ones that look like the 300 dollar knipex ones haha. They last about 2 years but then are only good for thicker wires. 11 dollars a pair. The brand is 'knoweasy"..... horrible name but after they wont strip the 24+ they're good for the tool box and last years for household stuff. Never buy knipex side cutters, the blades tend to explode and im now caught in a cycle where i keep ordering the same pair and sending back the broken ones haha
If you’re ruining one pair of Knipex side cutters after the other, YOU are DEFINITELY doing something wrong. Treated properly they last forever. For example, the models made for electronics are for copper and mild steel wire. For piano wire, you need the ones with carbide blades. And either way, you need to respect the maximum wire gauge for the tool and type of wire.
@@tookitogo cutting led legs or quarter watt resistors. I swear to God man. I have lots of knipex tools and give them as gifts but the side flush cutters have all exploded. I think it's the tempered vanadium coating that gets a pressure crack then let's go. Haha I use a larger set side snips now that never get dull and also cust 10 gauge wire for rc stuff with no issues. I think Amazon gets the knipex tools that are not perfect like the others I have and it's reflected in the price. The next set of small ones I get are going to be left near the 3d printer. I really like ifixit tools. You can destroy them and they replace any tool wirh no questions asked and send a ton of extra tools. I know the Canadian manager by name because I gift their bit sets to people so often and he hooks me up big time when the Phillips heads (inevitably wear out). Haha their ceramic tweezers are the best for populating smd parts by hand. Much better quality than the ones from ali which look identical.
I've had that particular box for years. Not 100% sure where I bought it, but I think it was at a local electronics shop. You can find them pretty easily on places like Amazon and AliExpress, or even places like Digikey and Mouser. Just search for "breadboard jumper wires" or maybe "jumper wire kit" and you should find some. If you liked the video though, should you just be buying solid core copper wire and be making them as you need? Or did you mean the wire I used to make my own jumpers? That box I bought from Adafruit, but you can find 24AWG solid copper wire anywhere that sells electronics stuff - Amazon, AliExpress, Digikey, Mouser, Adafruit, Sparkfun, etc. Just make sure it's 24AWG solid copper with PVC insulation. If the insulation material is not specified, it's probably PVC. For this application, other insulation like silicone or rubber is less desirable.
I started experimenting back in the 70's but being a traveling musician I began to travel more and more and somehow lost touch with my work bench. All these years later in my "retirement" I now have assembled a dream experimenters work bench and started putting together a synthesizer from a few chips and that led to a sequencer and that led to a small set of amps to drive a couple of small speakers, well you get the picture. I wanted to build each part from scratch. What a rat's nest that became on my bread board(s). I then realized that troubleshooting was a nightmare in that nest so I began cutting my leads to fit. But then I ran across your little gadget here. They say genius is the ability to perceive the obvious. I don't know how obvious this is but it is simply genius. I printed mine out and love it!! It is saving me a ton of "fiddling with the wires" time lol! Thank you!!! Anyone who experiments with electronics on a breadboard and has a 3d printer, don't even think about it. Just print this out. You will love it!
Neatness counts!
Anecdote: Too many decades ago, I was blessed with the best lab partner in a "Digital Ccts" course. Dave spent his free time "neat-i-fying" our breadboard (a digital volt meter) with custom length, colour coded jumpers (while I focussed on the write-ups.) At the end of the course, the instructor sheepishly approached us with his "woven" rat's nest version, saying, "You guys will have to tear-down a board, returning each of its component to the lab's inventory... Would you swap this one for yours for me to use as a teaching aid for next year's class?... Please...."
I imagine Dave's work of art might be still on display at that institute!! Good times! Thanks for rekindling those memories!
Beautiful story - thanks for sharing!
@@3nertia One sees T-shirts displaying the NASA logo everywhere... I've concluded mine stands for "Not Another Senior's Anecdote" (Good grief!) 🙂
Unfortunately, about 10 years after grad, we lost contact with one-another. Too many sea-changes.
Thankfully, in spite of life being a series of nomadic upheavals, I can look back to recognise there's usually been a talented colleague/mentor showing "a better way".
Life's lesson: "Enjoy the journey and the people you meet along the way" ('cuz the destination sucks... big time...) 🤣😂🤣😂
Cheers! 🙂
@rustycherkas8229 wait what lol
@@rustycherkas8229 'The destination' is probably better than an eternity of Alzheimer's.
By the way, you should make more videos. You did a great job not only designing the tool, but explaining it as well.
It is not only the mess. I built a fuzz pedal to a breadboard and use long jumper wires that are dangling all over the place. Fuzz works, but due to stray capacitances and inductances, it also plays some Asian radio 😂
When I was 9 I acquired an old telephone. I had the junction box for the phone lines on my bedroom window. Took a bit of testing but I got it working and hid it in my sock drawer (wasn't allowed my own phone). You'd tap two wires together to make a digit, two taps was a 2 etc.
I could make and receive calls but I got the local radio station full volume through the handset 😂 I was so lost with that one.
You should patent this and get someone to distribute it in stores. It's a genius invention!
In 1972 I built a DIGITAL POLYPHASE WATTMETER, on breadboard.for my BSEE senior project. It was Kick A$$ good, but lotsa breadboarding, and your device wouldhave been a GodSend.
By the way, 120V, 230V, 460Volts, and 5A, 10A, 20A, 40A and 80 Amps all measured out of a 15 amp, 120Volt classroom wall receptacle. I got one measurement to lie, and 15 others to swear to it! With 0.25% accuracy, ACED THE SENIOR PROJECT, and GRADUATED with honors. (120 watts to 64000 watts full scale from a wall outlet) It was FUN!
This looks really useful! Ever since I saw Ben Eater's video, I've been making my own jumpers. I've gotten good enough to eyeball the length for bus-to-board jumpers.
Regarding the problem with insulation on short jumpers - I strip and bend one lead first, and that keeps the insulation in place and makes it a little bit easier to grip the wire when stripping the other end.
or you know what? slap electrical tape on top
Perfection. And here I am using staples like a heathen.
Genius! What a fantastic solution. This video should have more views.
All the really clever things seem simple once someone has designed them.
Works as shown!!.. Thank You for sharing this project!!
So simple and such a clever solution. Thank you for sharing.
Absolutely Brilliant! After testing, one can go straight to a prototype on a perf board with precut wires.
Well this is certainly easier than my tried and tested (through school, university and many hobby projects) method of marking the correct length in the insulation by using my nails
Great tool! I made one immediately after watching your video. Rewatched the video with the tool in hand and it works great.
Thanks 😅
This is awesome, I've been making these manually by eye for ages and they're never quite the right length. This print is going to come in super useful!
This is a brilliant tool that you came up with. I'll definitely be printing one for myself (and maybe a few for the local library-based maker space). I think I'll play around with a layer-based color change to make the slot divisions easier to see. Thanx for releasing the STL for free. (I probably would have bought one if you were only selling them, but the library would have missed out on the donation.)
I always wanted some kind of tool to use with the jumper wires. Never took the time to develop it. But you did! It works great! thank you!
I was going to design this - and you saved me the trouble. Thanks Brett, good job!
I printed this in hi-res (0.1 layer height @ 50mm/s) and it came out perfect. Happiness!
Got one made and watched again and yes, it works just like the man says. VERY useful. Thank you.
I am surprised why a lot of people won’t wire their breadboard like this. I still take joy in carefully breadboarding my some prototypes. It is fun and it creates a detail map in your mind of the hardware as well.
Nice, I imagine I'll be printing out one of these soon. I like to use wires out of solid core Ethernet cables for breadboarding. They're easy to tuck into tight spaces and you get 8 color/pattern combinations
megabrain, ima have to start doing that sometimes. Do you have trouble with them being too thin?
I agree it's the way to go. The jumper wires with ends you can buy are too fat, so are some components like a 7805 regulator, diodes and the post headers you get with micros. These will mess up your breadboard(makes for loose connections). Be nice to breadboards and don't stuff fat wires in them.
@@veryrealpersonwhoisreal I've never had issues with it, but I suppose it might depend on your particular breadboard
I like the length jig. But the stripping can be accomplished much faster with a stripper that auto sizes to the wire diameter, and has an adjustable end stop for length. These are widely available with either side entry or front entry into the jaws, and not very expensive.
Love this! I came across this video because I thought of making a ruler from some thick paper and laminate it (don’t own a 3D-printer … yet 😅). Would be nice to have a way to measure between two spots directly on the breadboard how long the wire needed to be, for when you don’t yet know the length. I’ve also needed to make wires with 90 degrees corners around the board, and this was pretty tedious to measure.
Pin (hole) spacing on breadboards is pretty much standardized as 1/10 of an inch. (Yes there are some variations, but this is the spacing for most IDC connectors and dual inline pin (DIP) components that get plugged into a breadboard. If you live in any country other than Libya or the US, the spacing is 2.54 mm. So the breadboard sort of acts as a measuring tool to begin with. There are 16 pins on the component? that means it's going to have a component length of (about) 9/10 of an inch (16/2 + ~1) with the variability on the 'about' 1 being the clearance needed to be able to plug DIP's next to each other across the "gap".
In my experience the spacing from the bus bar's to the field is either 0 or 1 pin, and the gap in the middle is (again usually) 2 pins. That said, you should be able to take two boards, or if the bus bar parts from the board, and span either gap to get a count.
There are exceptions of course. If you are working with an Arduino R3 or earlier board (I don't know if they changed this for R4, but it would likely break hats) the spacing of the pins on the board includes a gap that is not an even multiple of 1/10" across. This is sort of where the dupont connector flexible wires are a good hack for, or go up a pin, and trim to match.
I know there are connectors that follow one of the newer 2mm spacing, and you may need to do custom jumpers to bo between the two standards.
I do have a 3d printer, (or 9) and will be printing one of these up, (along with a resistor leg form to bend legs without stressing the resistor.) Either as soon as the model I'm printing now is done, or when I get another printer up and running.
Thank you for this informative comment!
I just got a piece of perf board and cut it on a 45° angle for measuring, but I like his stripping and bending holes.
A super-neat board is a thing of beauty.
So is a fine oil painting, and I'm crap at that as well.....
At 5:05 I use hot tweezer strippers - they can strip even down to less than a millimeter of remaining insulation if you need it. Very quick and easy to use. Your follow up method of stripping just the remaining insulation and sliding it into place works too. I do that sometimes, but with hot strippers there is no need for that, every wire is stripped using the same technique, so your muscle memory kicks in and you "whip out" wires cut to fit so quickly you don't even remember doing them.
I use a pocket knife once I mark it with the strippers
is that a specific kind of stripper, or do you literally heat up tweezers and use those?
@@kali_muon HOTweezers are a special kind of electric wire stripper. They strip wire using heat for a clean and easy strip. Have you ever tried to strip a tiny piece of wire? Regular strippers require a lot of pulling force and its nearly impossible. These require little to no pulling force. You are supposed to pull off the insulation by hand, but many just pull it off with the stripper. In aerospace and defense we use Teflon coated wire. Teflon is very tough and will not melt from a soldering iron. You can actually rest a soldering iron on the wire jacket and it will do nothing. You can't use regular wire strippers on Teflon - too tough to cut, you have to use Hot Tweezer Strippers. Check out some videos on them... I swear by them. You can often get them used for a good price. Hot Tweezer type strippers can also strip common PVC wire, you just use a low heat setting.
I did not know about them... interesting 👍
I liked the video so much that I not only gave a thumbs up, but I subscribed too. I even had this device on the printer before the video even ended. 😃
Dunno why this is surfacing now, but this is a great idea. I so often fall back on the bendy jumpers because they're less work than re-aligning stuff so that my limited supply of pre-cut jumpers, but then I end up with a rat's nest board that is impossible to debug or modify...
I'm sure there's a bit of practice needed before getting up to speed, but it looks like once up to speed it's not much longer than searching the pre-cuts for the right size, and the results look worth it.
Maybe a future version that automatically measures, cuts, and strips?
Great design mate
That is pretty cool tool! Great idea! 👍 Usually, on bigger projects, I run out of jumpers needed size and I have multiple of these jumper wire boxes.. 😂
My local library printed me one from your design. Thanks very much.
I absolutely love this. Ill 3D print my own version using my Knipex "stripper gun thing™". But the basic idea is wonderful. Great work.
Bend and Snap, works Everytime!
That is a genius tool. Wish I had a 3D printer.
You need a friend with one or one of the commercial places that will print for you. Else use a ruler to measure and your fingernail to measure the strip length, worked for me for many years. Easier to strip first then bend the stripped end on a hard surface. For short lengths strip one end double length and slide the insulation back to the middle after cutting.
Nice video and tool. I myself only use white wire. It is just cheaper to get a large spool of one color wire (usually that tough Teflon jacket type) than having 10 color spools (the decade colors) or those handy multicolor wire packs. I am going to make a tool based on the Arduino UNO. It will use a stepper motor and pinch wheels to eject and cut a piece of wire to any length based on a keypad entry. Say I need a need a "5-er" (what I call a 5 hole long wire), I simply press 5 and then # on the keypad and a prefect length wire is dispensed. Then I just strip it using hot strippers and just bend the ends by hand. If I need the same length again, I just press # to dispense the same as the last length. I could actually make an auto stripper and even auto bender on it, but that would be a bit elaborate... maybe on a delux model, but at least a length dispenser would be helpful. Let me know... I will post a video.
In military protoryping (where I picked up my techniques), we usually use white Teflon jacketed wire for all of our connections. Colors help, but the electrons don't care. In deliverable electronics, the wires are marked with their unique wire number (on a marking/dispensing machine) so they can be indentifed in a harness/bundle if needed. The idea is: Wiring done right very rarely fails, so using one color of high quality wire is all you need, as "buzzing" out failed harnesses are usually done by removing the connectors at both ends and checking each pin... color doesn’t really help... especially in harness with 100's of wires... having multicolor wires with stripes on them - the permutations of wire colors is just not practical and is very expensive. I am surprised the automotive industry does not go the military way... they try to save a penny at every step.
I'd personally love to see something like this! This sounds very useful for speeding up my prototyping.
@@jnnewman90 I just coded the Arduino today. I have an Eleegoo Super Starter Kit which has the Ardunio UNO, a 4 Coil Stepper Motor, A Stepper Motor Driver Board, as well as other sensors I don't need for this project. I will build the prototype tomorrow. I will need to get a strong 12V Solenoid that can actuate a wire clipper.
I will post some slides tomorrow on my website. It's easy to find, it's just my full name with a dot in between. After I build a prototype, I will post a video on my channel. I recommend getting a Hot Tweezer Stripper that has an adjustable stop so you place the wire to the stop, squeeze the tweezers, and gently pull off the insulation with no effort. It is a must for Teflon wire (that soldering irons won't melt - that is why Teflon is used in military wiring). Get a temperature adjustable Hot Tweezer Stripper so you can use it with lower cost PVC wire that requires a low temperature to strip.
@@jnnewman90 I just posted a video on my channel for the prototype. Search for: Wire Dispenser Breadboard.
Clearly you need to add a bank of colored felt markers that your machine can select and use to apply color coding! 😊
@@Graham_Wideman Actually, bread board wires are relatively short, that is, they don't go into a harness and pop out somewhere else - so color coding (or wire number marking) is helpful. But on a bread board, you can see where each wire runs. True, colored wires may help trace wires, but since you can use tweezers and such to move wires around, color coding is not absolutely needed but it can help in some cases. But your color coding markers on white is a good idea - hard to implement, makes the machine way more expensive, and markers need to be capped when not in use - but a good idea and this is thinking outside the box. I like that kind of thinking.
excellent tool and vid. Grabbed the stl and will use it to teach my daughter more about breadboarding for her robotics.
Late comer here. Downloaded the .STL file, sent it to PCBWay 3D Print. Got it in the mail yesterday. (All five of them). They came out superbly. Watched your awesome video 8 times with template in hand. Works like a charm. It's great that you expanded on Ben's tips and tricks. This will come in very handy. Now, where do I send the "Buy me a coffee/beer"?
-d
Very well thought out and executed. Thank you.
Awesome, thanks for sharing!
Brilliant
Actually legendary bro!
Hey Brett.
Great video. Could we get more?
someone who has been breadboarding since the early 80's i can appreciate the neatness but this is a breadboard and alot of times you need to move jumpers, if they are precut then you need to make more. this is a prototype so neatness isnt a factor, its about making the circuit work. the simplest way is to have a spool of 22 ga and just cut what you need, its quicker, you can tidy up the final later.
My son in law printed one for me. Awesome thingy.. tnx for sharing
What an elegant solution! I'm going get one of these printed 😃
Thank you for making this very useful tool and sharing it. And thank you for making a user guide video for it. I'm inspired to be like you one day...❤
I love this. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing.
Whenever I see videos like this I'm very skeptical, because the title sounds a bit like clickbait.
This however delivers on the promise. And it appears to be a handy tool, indeed.
Triangle thingy downloaded and printet - thank you for sharing!
Take my money! Oh, it's free. Take my admiration and thanks.
Lovely system.
Pretty smart, really worth printing
I clicked on this to find out why this video is 10 minutes long.
same here 😀 The magic of youtube algorithm
It's a long video because Brits (and sometimes Aussies) are a bit long winded. They like to give you the full back story. I know... because I am told I do the same. That must be the Welch in me... not quite British (I guess) but close enough [smile].
That's because his mom came downstairs to the basement with warm milk and cookies that interrupted his train of thought..
Loll same
Same 😂
You said Ben eater. So your video came into my feed.
This is awesome! Thank you for sharing the design of this awesome tool!
The majority of Electro-Jox, Sparkies, etc. worth their weight, are somewhat OCD, or super neat, and all that.
Great vid, thanks mate.
. ; )
This is going to make me a breadboarding God!
Thank you!
Thank you. That's helpful.
That’s a neat tool, thanks. I was thinking someone might like to make an STL for an IC straightener (I don’t have a printer yet, it’s on my to buy list)
Downloaded. Thanks.
Fussy but brilliant. The color-coding alone would make it worth the effort for breadboards that see a lot of changes to a base circuit, like benchtop robots and guitar pedal experiments.
Very nice idea, well done !
This is brilliant! Nice job! I've downloaded the STL file and can't wait to print it!
0:52 yep, ben eater (:
Brilliant!
Thank you for STL! 👍🖐
Innovative and amazing tool! 😃
Simply marvelous!
That's very neat.
Pity I don't have a 3D printer. But I think I might have an idea to make something similar..
Very cool! Thank you for sharing.
Nice! I think I need that and thx for making that unique tool.
super! Thanks
Man I wish I'd found this before building Ben's 8-bit CPU...
Awesome stuff, Brett! Subbed.
Es GENIAL !!! Gracias !!!
Could perhaps use some mm thin rod and a 1.5 tube and make a telescopic jumper 😅
Wondered where to buy one like this??? Looks easy and clean looking breadboard jumper setup
That's very useful! Thank you!
Would you also add the source file, not just the STL, so we can more easily improve it/work on it, please?
Btw does it also work with the type of wire strippers that grab the wire in two places and pull on opposite sides?
Lovely! Good job - subscribed!👍😀
VERY clever!
I'd love to see a simpler form of the print where you stick the wire through a hole and then the lengths spiral out in a curve.
Great idea. Any update to that template? Where you bought that wire strippers?
I myself buy 1mm solid copper wire and do my things with those.
Nice
Great tool. But mine would have to be aluminum. I use hot tweezer strippers as they require almost no pulling force to strip off the insulation.
Nice idea but I'd like to be able to make those wires that go round a chip to connect a pin on one side to a pin on the other more neatly too. Like the one you need to connect pin 2 to pin 6 of a 555.
You should be able to count the number of holes from one pin, around the chip to the other pin, make a wire that long and work out the two (or more) bends required.
@@tonylock7657 The example given (555 timer) works better with the jumper going over the top of the IC, instead of around like you describe. But since the hole spacing is 0.1" pitch, using a ruler marked in 10ths of an inch one can measure the route easily enough.
neat
Nice. Is this pla or tpu?
Grrat design, you should sell them, for people like me with no 3d printer...
I would buy it...
There are plenty of print services that will print this if you send them some money (and the STL).
All i ever wanted was to know how to find this solid wires... all i get are those that are a thread of thinner soft wires...
It's a so-called Brettboard
I checked Amazon... I don't see any wire jumper jig like yours. Like I asked, where get that???
I'm about to order this from a 3d printer but am wondering what best material to use when printing?
Material is not overly important as long as it's a rigid material. I mostly print in ABS, but PLA, PETG, ASA or even nylon should be fine. I'd suggest using whatever you have available or whatever is cheapest if you're using a 3d printing service. The only material I can think of to avoid would be TPU, as it's soft and flexible and not really suitable for a bending tool.
I use one of the cheap black ones that look like the 300 dollar knipex ones haha. They last about 2 years but then are only good for thicker wires. 11 dollars a pair. The brand is 'knoweasy"..... horrible name but after they wont strip the 24+ they're good for the tool box and last years for household stuff. Never buy knipex side cutters, the blades tend to explode and im now caught in a cycle where i keep ordering the same pair and sending back the broken ones haha
If you’re ruining one pair of Knipex side cutters after the other, YOU are DEFINITELY doing something wrong. Treated properly they last forever. For example, the models made for electronics are for copper and mild steel wire. For piano wire, you need the ones with carbide blades. And either way, you need to respect the maximum wire gauge for the tool and type of wire.
@@tookitogo cutting led legs or quarter watt resistors. I swear to God man. I have lots of knipex tools and give them as gifts but the side flush cutters have all exploded. I think it's the tempered vanadium coating that gets a pressure crack then let's go. Haha I use a larger set side snips now that never get dull and also cust 10 gauge wire for rc stuff with no issues. I think Amazon gets the knipex tools that are not perfect like the others I have and it's reflected in the price. The next set of small ones I get are going to be left near the 3d printer. I really like ifixit tools. You can destroy them and they replace any tool wirh no questions asked and send a ton of extra tools. I know the Canadian manager by name because I gift their bit sets to people so often and he hooks me up big time when the Phillips heads (inevitably wear out). Haha their ceramic tweezers are the best for populating smd parts by hand. Much better quality than the ones from ali which look identical.
Nice tool.
Amazon link?
How can I get one of these tools without a 3D printer?
I was starting to type how he stole Ben eaters jumper technique when he said “i came across this RUclips channel by the name of Ben eater”. ☆
That's awesome. Could you share qhere you bought thia box with solid copper PVC insulated wires?
I've had that particular box for years. Not 100% sure where I bought it, but I think it was at a local electronics shop. You can find them pretty easily on places like Amazon and AliExpress, or even places like Digikey and Mouser. Just search for "breadboard jumper wires" or maybe "jumper wire kit" and you should find some. If you liked the video though, should you just be buying solid core copper wire and be making them as you need?
Or did you mean the wire I used to make my own jumpers? That box I bought from Adafruit, but you can find 24AWG solid copper wire anywhere that sells electronics stuff - Amazon, AliExpress, Digikey, Mouser, Adafruit, Sparkfun, etc. Just make sure it's 24AWG solid copper with PVC insulation. If the insulation material is not specified, it's probably PVC. For this application, other insulation like silicone or rubber is less desirable.
Cat 5 network cable.