Joe Squarzini wrote:
Wayne, regarding your post on an upgraded KNB2. The time has come for
all of us in the kit building community to embrace surface mount. We
need to start installing these devices ourselves. It's really not that
hard.
There's a difference between replacing a couple of SMDs, as many of us
have done, and populating a whole board -- especially if you are using
the smaller ones and they are closely packed. My personal feeling is
that I would not want to tackle anything more than a very simple project
using SMDs.
The full advantage of using these devices is not felt unless they can be
packed densely anyway. If you look at examples of boards produced
commercially by automated processes, it's hard to imagine duplicating
that kind of product by hand. If you have the Elecraft DSP, for
example, look at the daughterboard containing the processor.
It would be possible to produce a board with an open layout and specify
only the largest sizes of SMDs. But the frustration factor (consider
soldering the pins of a microprocessor or other large IC!) would be much
greater and the advantage small.
Just my opinion.
--
73,
Vic, K2VCO
Fresno CA
http://www.qsl.net/k2vco
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