Electronics Prototyping
In electronics, prototyping means building an actual circuit to a theoretical design to verify that it works, and to provide a physical platform for debugging it if it does not. The prototype is often constructed using techniques such as wire wrap or using veroboard or breadboard, that create an electrically correct circuit, but one that is not physically identical to the final product.
Open-source tools exist to document electronic prototypes (especially the breadboard-based ones) and move forward toward production such as Fritzing and Arduino.
A technician can build a prototype (and make additions and modifications) much more quickly with these techniques —however, it is much faster and usually cheaper to mass produce custom printed circuit boards than these other kinds of prototype boards. This is for the same reasons that writing a poem is fastest by hand for one or two, but faster by printing press if you need several thousand copies.
The proliferation of quick-turn pcb fab companies and quick-turn pcb assembly houses has enabled the concepts of rapid prototyping to be applied to electronic circuit design. It is now possible, even with the smallest passive components and largest fine-pitch packages, to have boards fabbed and parts assembled in a matter of days.
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Famous quotes containing the word electronics:
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—Frances Beale, African American feminist and civil rights activist. The Black Woman, ch. 14 (1970)