"Dead Bug" Construction
Free-form construction can be used in cases where a PCB would be too big or too much work for a small number of components. Several methods of construction are used. At one extreme a wiring pen can be used with a perforated board, producing neat and professional results. At the other extreme is "dead bug" style, with the ICs flipped upside-down with their pins sticking up into the air like a dead insect. While it is messy-looking, free-form construction can be used to make more compact circuits than other methods. This is often used in BEAM robotics and in RF circuits where component leads must be kept short. This form of construction is used by amateurs for one-off circuits, and also professionally for circuit development, particularly at high frequencies.
For high-frequency work a grounded solderable metallic base such as the copper side of an unetched printed circuit board can be used as base and ground plane. Information on high-frequency breadboarding and illustrations of dead bug with ground plane construction are in a Linear Technologies application note.
Read more about this topic: Point-to-point Construction
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