I'm still pretty new to surface mount soldering, but I'm discovering that I really enjoy it! Last night, I was building a tiny little oscillator, just for the SMD soldering practice, and I discovered a spot where I needed a 1K resistor, but didn't have room for a "big" 1206 resistor... so I found an itty-bitty-flyspec sized one on an old hard drive board, desoldered it, and put it into my circuit... and it worked! I could barely *see* that little resistor without a magnifying glass. I think it was either an 0603 or a 0402.
The SMD technique I've had a lot of success with... my "secret ingredient"... is... masking tape! Put the part on the board, tear or cut off an appropriately sized piece of masking tape (from big to tiny), tape down one side of the part, solder one end (or a couple of pins), remove tape, solder the rest. For the tiny parts, it's easier to cut a little piece of masking tape with a small pair of scissors and position it with tweezers, because the rough edges from tearing the tape make it harder to get a good hold on the edge of the component. I don't know if this is unorthodox or not, but it seems to work well for me. The other tool I use a lot is a pair of bent-nose locking tweezers that I got from Micro-Mark. They're actually to big for any of the really tiny parts, but in a lot of cases I can use them to clamp down a SMD resistor or capacitor. I have a small $20 magnifying lamp, and an illuminated magnifying glass, and a pair of cheap reading glasses from the drugstore. I don't have a fancy visor or anything like that. I still want to get a flux pen and some thinner solder! At the moment I'm still using the same iron, tip, and solder I used to build my K2. It works okay, but a slightly smaller tip, and finer solder, would probably give me neater results. So, Wayne, Eric, can we have an all-surface-mount radio kit that we can solder *ourselves*? :-) Sarah AF6FH _______________________________________________ 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
