Wait what,holy shit this changes everything. Always thought those were just random manufacturer marks on smt resistors.

I found some of them. They look super helpful. How do you breadboard things with them?

You mostly don't - I had a decent setup for etching, so I just quick-and-dirtied a layout, put down a few extra pads where I suspected I might need some, processed a board and gave it a go.

The one important thing is to not pinch on the pincers - buy a good pair... :)

One last question: Where do you order them from? The labeled kits I see are around $120 and I’m on a college student budget. Thanks for answering my questions.

When I was on a student budget, I mostly asked my lab tutor kindly if I could help myself to the parts stocked by my university - the lab people were so happy someone actually wanted to build something that I was basically given free access to the parts bins.

Additionally, regional distributor ELFA had bins of 1000 1% 0805 resistors for ~$10/ea, so I just purchased a couple of bins at a time as I needed them until I had an E12-ish set.

If there is one nearby, I'd strongly suggest you visit a maker space - chances are they have SMT kits already.

I have 0603 resistor and capacitor sample book from Aliexpress. They are for about $25 (or $15 resistor-only) and the book format is convenient.

However, I still use wired parts for breadboarding.

You can easily use protoboard instead. 0805 goes between two pads no problem.

-That's very true, I should have been more specific - I mostly did circuits with the occasional IC in it - trying to dead bug a QFN or TSOP gets old fast. :)