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The easiest way to work with printed circuit boards is to purchase a preprinted board from an electronics parts supplier. You’ll find a wide variety of preprinted PCBs at online distributors such as Hobby Engineering (www.hobbyengineering.com), Jameco Electronics (www.jameco.com), or All Electronics (www.allelectronics.com).

As you can see, preprinted PCBs come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. The most useful, from a hobbyist’s point of view, are the ones that mimic the terminal-strip and bus-strip layout of a solderless breadboard. For example, Figure 6-14 shows a PCB that has 550 holes laid out in a standard breadboard arrangement. With a preprinted PCB that has a breadboard layout, you can transfer your breadboard prototype circuit to the PCB without having to come up with an entirely new layout.

FIGURE 6-14: A preprinted PCB that uses a standard breadboard layout.

Some preprinted circuit boards have layouts that are similar to standard breadboard layouts, but not identical. So check carefully before you build; you may have to make minor adjustments to your circuit layout to accommodate the PCB you’re using.

If necessary, you can cut a larger PCB to a smaller size. One way to cut a PCB is to score it on both sides with a heavy-duty utility knife, and then snap it at the score. Another way is to cut it with a rotary tool such as a Dremel.