partial P112 kits

On Jun 22, 2010, at 9:20 AM, Dave McGuire wrote: Or, if you are just starting woodworking, you might by a kit with some of the harder to do properly pieces pre-assembled and/or precut. Perhaps you might buy this as some 'starter kit' from the local woodworking store, specifically designed to teach some basic skills to a novice while providing the satisfaction of building something useful and beautiful without scaring people off with something that looks hard but might actually be pretty easy if properly demonstrated. SMT LOOKS hard. Regardless of one's personal experience with soldering, the small parts and static warnings all say to the novice "steer clear of this, newbie!" It's not a "knee-jerk" reaction when it is based upon somebody's evaluation of their personal skill level and ability to succeed. Nobody likes to fail, that's just human nature. SMT soldering doesn't look easy, so people steer clear of it. Some of us who've tried it have found our failure rate to be higher than through-hole. Is it within acceptable levels? Probably: every time I've done SMT work, I've managed to fix the flaws pretty quickly (and even spot them before the dreaded smoke test) and I've probably gotten a little better from the experience. I certainly have enough confidence in my SMT skills to do moderate rework on SMT projects, and I've even built a few microcontroller projects that had one or two SMT components. Was it an enjoyable experience? Let's just say I find through-hole projects more rewarding at this stage. I don't feel it is something I (as a three-project-a-year tinkerer) ever will be 100% comfortable with. And that's the point. Everybody has their own skill level, and the novice tends to be very bad at judging theirs, often pessimistically. I, as somebody who assembles and sells kits, would much rather err on the side of caution and hand-hold the novice through the rough spots by pre-assembling the SMT stuff. I've seen one or two P112 boards assembled by novices: they aren't pretty. There are lots of cold joints, lots of excess solder (a sin I'm even guilty of now and then), and just plain look ugly. However, they work.. which is a testament to the design of the P112. I really cringe at the thought of somebody putting on a QFP Z80182 processor using a RadioShack 15 watt pencil with the tip filed down (as was actually the advice in an ARRL publication for inexpensive SMT soldering tools) when they have trouble soldering on a through-hole discrete without lifting a trace or cold-soldering it. Yes, but for many of us, we have 30+ years of through-hole experience and hundreds (if not thousands) of completed projects under our belt. The vast majority of kits I build (including the ones I've sold over the years) are entirely through-hole, in some cases by design. I'm actually working on ramping up production of a kit I used to sell that has a component that is now only available in QFP, the DIP package is long obsolete.. and I'm figuring on either having it robot-soldered on to a DIP carrier for the end-user. (Note that this is also saving me a ton of time having to redesign the board to take a QFP). Maybe I am doing them a disservice. However, once people reach a certain stage with the hobby, they don't need kits anymore, they can just read the schematic, fab their own board, and type the parts list into Digikey. I feel that stage, to use your woodworking analogy earlier, is when they've assembled a good collection of tools and the skills to use them properly. My initial resistance aside, I understand people want the entire experience. Not everybody does: some people like buying raw wood at the hardware store and crafting their project every step of the way. Some people want precut pieces that can be perhaps modified for different results. Some people want completely assembled furniture that is just "unfinished" so they can have the joy of being creative without having to learn woodworking skills. And, some people just like going to a quality handmade furniture store and buying the work of a craftsman, that would far exceed any ability they would ever have in woodworking even if they labored the rest of their lifetime. Point is, just calling 'bullshit' because some people find SMT hard is itself a knee-jerk reaction based on your experiences. Not everybody shares your experiences, nor wants to. And I think that's a big point you are missing in this entire debate. Can we please get back to arguing about how to keep systems "authentic" when buying replacement parts? That argument was much more fruitful and germane.