I use one of these dam hot air guns. Absolutely worth the price.
I don't use it for fine pitch ICs, I use the slobber-n-wick approach
because I find applying very small amounts of solder paste nearly
impossible.
I have seen small solder balls between the pins. I simply slobber
on more solder and wick it back off. The vast majority of the time
it works fine. If it doesn't it is because the solder balls are
imbedded
in baked flux. I use alcohol and a stiff tooth brush to clean them out.
Done.
For everything else I use a diluted form of solder paste...
apply the paste
place the parts
bake the assembly at 80c for 20 minutes (drive
off the volatiles of the solder paste)
'reflow' using the hot air gun.
Works beautifully and is significantly faster than through hole.
Took me several projects to adapt to surface mount. I threw all
my through hole parts away so I wouldn't be tempted to design
with them again.
Seriously. Use surface mount a few times and you'll love it.
Make the investment in a hot air gun of some sort, you'll have
more success earlier and make the transition less painful.
ward
ae6ty
On Jan 28, 2010, at 3:28 PM, Dave Wade wrote:
I have built both an Elector SDR and a USA QRP Club DDS board, both of
which
have surface mount components on. I have also repaired some circuits
with
surface mount components. I have a hot air gun like this:-
http://www.pcb-soldering.co.uk/index.php?target=products&product_id=37
And while its only really essential for removing SMD ICs, at which its
very
good, I personally think it makes a much better job of "R"s and "C"s
that an
Iron and Solder. So if you are going to do any volume of SMD work I
would
highly recommend one, but its not essential and don't be put of if you
don't
have one...
Dave
G4UGM
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dave - WB6DHW
> Sent: 28 January 2010 22:19
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [soft_radio] Re: LD-1 Discussion on
> Garage-shoppe.com Blog
>
>
> Peter:
> The procedure is to solder the ssop pins and not worry
> about shorts.
> Then use solder wick to remove the shorts. Easier than it
> sounds. Many
> have done this with IC's with .020" pitch.
>
> Dave - WB6DHW
> <http://wb6dhw.com>
