I have been reading the posts regarding working with surface mount components with great interest. One thing I think I should caution against. That is soldering capacitors with a soldering iron. Some years ago, when the folks I work for were just changing over to surface mount from through hole, I was making all my prototypes using a soldering iron. I used a fairly low temperature and thought it was perfectly acceptable. That is until one of my prototypes failed at a customer's location. They called, returned the part, and demanded to know exactly why it failed. Plus, they wanted a "corrective action." Those familiar with ISO 9000 will know what that means. After a brief investigation, I found a capacitor that was intermittent. I could flex the board and the thing would work. Let it go and it failed. So, I un soldered the cap and called the manufacturer. I didn't really expect them to do anything but I insisted on sending the part back for them to look at. A week or two later, one of their engineers called me and asked how I soldered the parts. I told him I used a soldering iron. He said that was my problem. I was causing micro fractures by uneven heating. He said never, ever solder a surface mount capacitor with a soldering iron. I took his advice and we have had no more problems with bad caps. Most of our products are injection molded and we do have a problem with the plastic blowing inductors off the board during molding. That, and the plastic drasticlly changes the RF characteristics of the circuit. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.