I know the group has given you good suggestions and options for SMD soldering but there is another route which is much better IMHO, but more expensive, of course. Being able to solder SMD devices easily, togther with todays CAD Tools, such as Eagle (free for small two-sided boards), makes experimenting with all sorts of devices possible and exciting. I have done a lot of work with Dallas Semiconductor 1-wire devices and Atmel AVR Microcontroller. Many of the devices are only available in SMD versions, so I jumped in with a hot-air work station and have had a lot of fun and success. A number of years ago I purchased an Aoyue 852A station on EBay for $80 or so. I also bought a 10cc syringe of Solder paste (Superior Solder Paste) for a few bucks. To use this method, for example to solder a sot-223 device with three or four pins on one side and a tab on the other, just lay a fine line of paste across all four pins and another parallel line of paste along the tab pad. The paste connects all four small pads. The paste is gooey so its easy to place and align the device onto the pads. Carefully align and move on to the next device to install. After all of the surface mount devices are placed, use the hot-air gun to 'melt' the solder paste. The 852 has an air flow adjustment which must be set very low to keep from blowing the tiny parts off or out of alignment. When the solder paste melts the solder snaps to the pads and device pins and clears the connection between the pins like magic. See YouTube for lots of videos. This is probably not the right solution for building a kit or two, but is a great option to consider for the hard-core builder. I have not done any Ham related building with this but am thinking about building a SMD QRP transmitter one of these days.
----- 73, Don KA1KU -- View this message in context: http://elecraft.365791.n2.nabble.com/soldering-SMD-s-tp7565684p7565770.html Sent from the Elecraft mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
