If there is one part in this whole Academy that has been made artisan, or at least semi artisan, it will be this part. Apart from a mold to place all the strips, the full extend of this breadboard has been made by hand and a sewing machine.
I started out with mapping out the size of the breadboard on cardboard. We didn't really have an idea on how big it needed to be, so finding a physical way of showing it was the best. Time passed however and we forgot about it, so a few weeks before the end of the academy, we took some A4 papers and mapped it out on the ground.
I took Inkscape, counted the amount of A4 papers (it were 8 of them) and drew a plan in the computer. By then I knew the size of the tape that I'd need for the conductive lines and based my plans on that. A lot of lines got deleted and we ended up with 4 horizontal lines (2x plus and min), but only nine vertical ones. But they would prove to be more than enough.
The next step would be to place them nicely aligned on the filt that I ordered. For that I laser cutted half of the file that I made before so that I could use that as a mold. In later days it would also prove usefull to replicate the board several times. Of course with the silver textile alone, we wouldn't have enough. So we added magnets and conductive wire to the whole process giving us more grip with the magnets.
Lasercutted mold with materials layed out
Once everything was in place, I started sewing. And it was one hell of a task. Our 2 sewing machines that we had couldn't handle the job. And even the new one had a hard time. Mostly the wire would break because it can't handle the glue in all our materials very well. It wasn't a nice start. But I pushed through, wiring and re-wiring the machine until all parts were fixated to the blue filt.
Inbetween testing of the board
After that came a nice and easy part, sewing the grey together with the blue. Because of the lack of glue this time, it went through the material like it was butter. I liked it.
The last sewing part was the holder for the stick. I should have thought about that earlier, so that I could take 2 sewing parts together and only have one stitch, but well, it will be for next version. I also stiched the middle of the board together so that we don't get a bag effect in the middle or it all moves to much when using the breadboard.
Back of the breadboard, part that holds up the stick
The last thing that lasted me was to find people to test the board with.
The finished board
Manuals and files
Mold giant breadboard
