Richard, SMT work requires some parts handling techniques and a few pieces of extra equipment if one is to be successful. If you are going to be building electronic equipment, it is something you may want to persue.
The first thing needed is to develop a gentle hand with the tweezers to adequately hold those small parts without having them fly off into 'never-never-land' when you try to pick them up. The second thing needed is a 'third hand' - to hold down the part while you use one hand to hold the soldering iron and another to apply a small bit of solder - a fixture that holds a vertical rod (stainless steel is a good choice) and applies a few ounces of pressure straight down (and not sideways) is a nice thing to have. A well lighted work area and a magnifier are quite desirable too, but that is not unique to SMT construction. Those are the essential things - some folks have developed exotic tools for SMT work, but you could get by with these basic essentials. Give it a try - you could see the availability of thru-hole parts dry up in your lifetime as more automated processes move to SMT. 73, Don W3FPR ----- Original Message ----- How hard is SMT soldering, really? I've been lusting after the TAPR Software Defined Radio kit,(http://www.tapr.org/tapr/html/Fdsp10.html) but it's majority SMT. I'm in my 30's, with fairly steady hands and decent vision... with the proper tools, should I be able to do this? Any experienced SMT builders out there got any pointers? Please respond to me directly - I'll summarize for the list later if there's interest. _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
