3 Dec
2008
3 Dec
'08
2:36 p.m.
John Floren 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.
I'll add my support for this statement. The combination of a good
soldering station, liquid flux, and small solder is the difference
between night and day. I would add solder wick in there as well. I
cringe when I look at older projects that were created with my $15.00
Radio Shack pencil. I don't think I've done 0603s yet, but 0805s and
1206s are a breeze, as are 64TQFPs and we'll see how TSSOP14s are
tonight, when I solder up some.
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.
I'd also say that if there are some unavoidable SMT parts (newer uCs
with larger footprints are only available in SMT), then you should
consider making the project SMT (the end user will need to buckle down
and get SMT equipment to solder up part of it, why not take advantage of
SMT across the design? Some developers will sell a board with just the
main SMT uC/CPLD/FPGA/etc. soldered, and the rest is through hole, which
I suppose is an OK compromise.
Of course, if the design is not a kit, then I vote SMT all the way.
SMT makes things like this possible:
www.jbrain.com/vicug/gallery/uIEC/
An entire CBM IEC compatible drive in 1.5" by 1.5" :-)
Boards came today and parts should be here tonight, I hope.
Jim