Re: gEDA-user: Re: Soldering irons

[Terry Porter <techman@dodo.com.au>]

Samuel A. Falvo II wrote:

> On Sunday 26 September 2004 01:02 am, DJ Delorie wrote:
>  
> > FYI: the SMTs were easier to solder than the through-holes.  Once I
> > got them positioned with the tweezers, that it ;-)
> >    
> What method did you use to solder them?  Did you place a blob of solder 
> on each pin of the 0803, place the part, then reflow the solder?  Or did 
> you just place the part, somehow fix it to the board, then solder?
>
> SOICs and QFPs I can just see running a single bead of solder down each 
> row of pins (basically a poor man's wave soldering).  It's the small 
> stuff that worries me most.
>
> Thanks.
For small SMT stuff I place a small drop of superglue between the pads then place the part with tweezers. When the glue is dry it's then safe to quickly solder the part.


This works for sot23's and 803's etc and stops the part sticking to the 
tip of the soldering iron because it's glued to the board. When I worked 
in the smt pcb assembly industry 17 years ago the solder paste held the 
parts to the pcb, but on occasion when required by the client we used 
the automated glueing facility on the pick and place machine, which 
added a drop of glue first just as I've outlined above.

Mind you, I'm looking at some very small smt parts on a usb wifi dongle 
here, and compared to them, a sot23 package looks positively gigantic!

Parts just keeps getting smaller, there is no way I could do these parts 
by hand. They're  only 0.032inch in length!

Cheers
Terry

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