3 Dec
2008
3 Dec
'08
1:31 p.m.
On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 2:05 PM, Paul Koning <Paul_Koning at dell.com> wrote:
It was extremely easy for me to solder dozens of SMT boards on day one
at one of my jobs, even though I had never done SMT before. However,
that was with a wonderful Weller soldering station, extremely good
solder, and flux to slather all over the board. If I were to try it as
Joe Diskpack, with a $15 radio shack soldering iron and the included
solder, I'd probably blob it to hell.
The decision to do SMT depends on your intended consumers. Will they
have a good station and a bottle of flux? If so, do it because SMT is
great. If not, SMT is probably pretty evil.
John
--
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> writes:
Chuck> There are inexpensive SMT to through-hole adapters available.
Chuck> While I wouldn't trust myself to carefully hand-solder a whole
Chuck> board full of SMT, the adpaters are fairly easy to do.
Soldering SMT by hand (other than BGA of course) is no big deal. It's
only slightly harder than through-hole. It does require suitable
tools -- thin solder and a fine tip professional grade soldering
iron. And it's a good idea to use liquid flux (a lesson I learned
from a technician friend who used to assemble large SMT based boards
by hand).
I've assembled boards with 100 or so 0603 caps, and some 60-120 lead
flatpack packages (0.65 mm pitch) this way. Take a bit of time and
work carefully. Mine worked the first try.
paul