I have a decent soldering station, but for SMD beyond a few parts I don't use a soldering iron. I use an i-Extruder pencil (a stepper-motor powered syringe dispenser) to apply dots of solder paste to the pads, then tweezers to pick-and-place the components. If it's a small area, I use my hot air station to melt the paste and solder the parts. If it's a larger board, I use a microcontroller-driven heating plate called a ReflowR to precisely ramp up the heat, melt the paste, and cool it off so as to cause the least thermal shock to the board or the components.
I'm not nearly as good at the latter as I am with simple thru-hole components, or a few larger SMD components. 0603 and above, I do by hand if there's just a few. Most people suggest a "tack one end then get the other" approach, and while it works, I don't find it as efficient as I'd like. So I use the same i-Extruder to apply dots of Amtech "tacky flux". I place the components on the pads, held down by the tacky flux, then tack-solder one end, then the other. If it needs it, I go back and flow enough solder to make a good fillet, but frequently the tack makes a decent fillet with that good flux. That's how I built a Zachtek WSPR beacon a few weeks back. It had four low-pass filter stages, each with several surface mount components. It was few enough that I didn't think it warranted the reflow plate, though I did use the hot air pencil to clean up the fillets I did with my soldering iron. Came out looking really good, and working well. 73, Gwen, NG3P On Thu, Jun 6, 2019 at 2:33 PM rich hurd WC3T <[email protected]> wrote: > Dead bug construction ROCKS. > > On Thu, Jun 6, 2019 at 2:02 PM Wayne Burdick <[email protected]> wrote: > > > I miss the good ol' days, e.g. high school, when my quick 'n' dirty > > transceiver projects were built by twisting component leads together. No > > PCB, no chassis, nothing but raw parts. Hook up a 9 V battery and a > > shamelessly untuned wire antenna. Work DX. Repeat. > > > > Wayne > > N6KR > > > > > > > On Jun 6, 2019, at 10:50 AM, James Doty <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > SMD soldering is actually pretty easy. It does take a good quality > > > soldering station to do it though. > > > > > > Yes, I need magnification when soldering surface mount components. :) > > > > > > ______________________________________________________________ > > > Elecraft mailing list > > > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > > > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > > > Post: mailto:[email protected] > > > > > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > > > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > > > Message delivered to [email protected] > > > > ______________________________________________________________ > > Elecraft mailing list > > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > > Post: mailto:[email protected] > > > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > > Message delivered to [email protected] > > > > > -- > 72, > Rich Hurd / WC3T / DMR: 3142737 > Northampton County RACES, EPA-ARRL Public Information Officer for Scouting > Latitude: 40.761621 Longitude: -75.288988 (40°45.68' N 75°17.33' W) Grid: > *FN20is* > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:[email protected] > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to [email protected] -- -+-+-+-+- Jenny Everywhere's Infinite: Quark Time http://quarktime.net ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
