The issue with breadboarding, IMHO, is that its useful for some things, but for others it can be at best a waste of time and at worst downright misleading. Trying to breadboard anything faster than a few 10s of MHz or > 500mA can end up taking longer than laying out a proper test PCB, by the time you've chased down odd activity or hit the limitation of the 'rats nest'. Anything that involves fast rise times and moderate to high currents is doomed... I've spent too many hours tracking down random gate oscillation on switching MOSFETs, unexpected gate punch-throughs, instrumentation amplifiers that wanted to be anything but... They're great for audio, or low-speed (<25MHz) digital but when it comes to the crunch a PCB is so cheap and simple these days its just a no-brainer for many things. I've almost given up perf-board in favour of PCBs as well... I mean, 10 pcb for <$20 in 7 - 10 days... and it looks so much more professional when showing prototypes to clients...

 

The issue with breadboarding, IMHO, is that its useful for some things, but for others it can be at best a waste of time and at worst downright misleading. Trying to breadboard anything faster than a few 10s of MHz or > 500mA can end up taking longer than laying out a proper test PCB, by the time you've chased down odd activity or hit the limitation of the 'rats nest'. Anything that involves fast rise times and moderate to high currents is doomed... I've spent too many hours tracking down random gate oscillation on switching MOSFETs, unexpected gate punch-throughs, instrumentation amplifiers that wanted to be anything but... They're great for audio, or low-speed (<25MHz) digital but when it comes to the crunch a PCB is so cheap and simple these days its just a no-brainer for many things. I've almost given up perf-board in favour of PCBs as well... I mean, 10 pcb for <$20 in 7 - 10 days... and it looks so much more professional when showing prototypes to clients...

This is my first time designing an SMPS. And this is valuable input. Thank you for your advice.