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Re: gEDA-user: Free Dog meetings at MIT starting this September!



On Aug 24, 2004, at 5:44 AM, Karel Kulhavý wrote:
I've got to agree completely with Dave here. Having soldered more than
a couple of things together in technologies ranging from vacuum tube to
high pin count fine pitch chips over the last 23 years since my first soldering
iron, I find that about the easiest thing is a board with 1206 passives
and SOIC chips. I'll grant you that things like QFN are a pain, but
an SO16 isn't and 1206's are so much faster to work with than leaded
resistors and capacitors. In fact, I almost always use surface mount
parts when building up a quick prototype on some proto-board material.
But the SMT capacitors we are having here in retail stored don't have any
numbers printed on them. Have you also encountered that problem?
Leave them in the package until you use them. With through-hole components, I use little trays and get out all the parts I'll need before I start soldering. But with SMT components, I leave them in their little paper strips (the way they come when you buy more than two or three of them...I buy SMT resistors a thousand at a time because of the quantity breaks...they typically cost three bucks per thousand) until I'm ready to place them on the board.

-Dave

--
Dave McGuire "...it's a matter of how tightly
Cape Coral, FL you pull the zip-tie." -Nadine Miller