26 Apr
2015
26 Apr
'15
11:22 p.m.
On Mon, 27 Apr 2015, TeoZ wrote:
You can do capacitor repair easily enough with just a
soldering iron. I
have reworked dozens of mac and PC motherboards over the years (and a
few video cards).
I suspect real hard SMD work (video chips and southbridges) might be
popular down the road to collectors.
Seconded. I don't own a hot air system (yet) and I do plenty of SMD work,
including 0402 stuff and sometimes smaller. The single most important
thing to have is liquid flux such as flux pen. You also really want a wide
tip (chisel, knife, or hoof) on the soldering iron to carry molten solder
to the joint. This is totally different from through-hole work since you
are applying flux directly to the joint before applying solder. With
enough flux, the right amount of solder just wicks right into the joint
(yes, really!). Even fine pitch QFPs don't give me any trouble.
The only thing I've yet to touch are BGA packages, and I'm really not
looking forward to the day when I have to...
Still...I see a lot of people using SMD tantalum parts to replace SMD
aluminum electrolytics, and after seeing so many of these SMD tantalums
burned to a crisp after they developed internal shorts, I certainly
wouldn't use them for general purpose bypass work. SMD solid polymers
which do not exhibit that type of failure mode are readily available in
the same case sizes (round cans) as the original aluminum electrolytics
and are also available in the same case sizes as SMD tantalums. Not only
that, but solid polymers are less expensive than tantalum parts.