Surface mount 101?

Ryan Clarke

I have never used/played with/done any surface mount soldering....

How does one 'begin' surface mounting? I've heard it said that you *can* hand solder anything that can be surface mounted, is this true? (Maybe not very fun to do, but true?)

Where should I start?

Thanks!

Ryan

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Sid Weaver
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Paul Baker

It's a difficult question to answer, mainly because there are serveral different methods a hobbyist can use to do surface mount soldering.· In a nutshell, yes hand soldering is possible on all surface mount packages except BGA packages. If you have a steady hand and good eyes you shouldn't have too much of a problem. I hand soldered a board that had several SOIC (1.27 mm pitch), 1 SOJ (1.27 mm pitch), 1 PQFP (0.85 mm pitch) and 1 TQFP (0.5 mm pitch). I had the most problems with the PQFP package, the pins were small but large enough to require extra time with the soldering iron to melt the solder, because of this extra time sometimes the iron would slip between the pins causing solder to bridge two adjacent pins. The TQFP package while having the smallest pins required only a small amount of time in contact with the iron to get the solder to flow and soldering was a cinch. If you decide to go the hand soldering route you should watch this video·(courtesy Howard Electronics). The first thing he does is lay a liberal bead of flux along the pins then drags a solder ball along the pins. To give you an idea of the scale involed, the tip of the iron is ~1mm in diameter (its either a .8 mm tip or a 1.2 mm tip).

If your interested in the other methods I can point you to some references.

Oh yeah one final thing, alignment of the chip is critical, especially with the finer pitch chips. Some people tack down opposite cornered pins before soldering the remaining pins. I just hold the chip firmly in place, quadruple check each side for alignment then solder one side of the chip,·I found it was faster and produced equivalent results.

Post Edited (Paul Baker) : 6/1/2005 7:50:19 PM GMT

Steve Joblin

Check out·this for "how-to" info...

http://www.machinegrid.com/content/view/59/114/

also, there are several Surface Mount Soldering Tutorials From SparkFun
Solder Paste Stenciling - How to apply solder paste with a $35 stencil.
Reflow Skillet - Reflowing trickier PCBs with a $30 hot plate!
Reflow Toaster - Attempting to reflow PCBs with a toaster oven.