Female headers for breadboard (or: how do I extend the pins of my breakout board?)

Question

Where do I find female headers with pins just long enough (~6mm) to fit a breadboard?

Ordinary socket headers such as these:

have pins that are too short to stay put in the breadboard, but the so-called stacking headers such as these:

have pins that are too long and too thin.

I sometimes have breakout boards with parts underneath (they are meant to be plugged into another board with socket headers), which I want to be able to use on the breadboard. The male-female extension wires from Adafruit are great for momentary checks, but not for something that might last a few weeks on the breadboard.

I can't find anything on Mouser, and even since Digikey stopped having a printed/PDF catalog, it's impossible to find anything unless you know the exact part number.

I know I can get the stacking headers and trim them, but there has to be a tidier solution.

Answer 1

There is a very nice solution for your problem, way back in the days (no clue how many days, I'm too young for that) manufacturer's (and hobbyists?) didn't always solder pins, they wire wraped them. Basically the header or mcu adaptor had really long legs so you could wrap a wire around it multiple times to form a decent connection. But since the only difference in headers between wire wrap variants and normal ones are longers legs, they are perfect for your breadboard.

Link: http://www.gravitech.us/208wiwrfehea.html http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_wrap