[sdiy] SMD comming your way

[Metrophage]

My bench is not yet set up for building with surface-mount components,
but they have come my way for repairs. The larger sizes really don't
bother me to solder. It is my opinion based on what I have seen that
through-hole can be much more durable, because of the increased
physical support. I have fixed a few devices which had simple parts
fault: A Kaoss Pad, a DVD-RAM drive, some other bit of audio gear which
passed through the house - where I'd try to fix one part, and I could
brush other parts off by gently nudging them with my hand as I worked!
One unit, I replaced a fried resistor with a through-hole one which I
had clipped and bent the leads into shape, and in the process of gently
doing this, another half dozen parts lept off of the board. It needed
to be fixed within an hour for a gig, I thought I was going to bear bad
news. I used wick to remove all of the solder from those pads and
pieces and redid them with no problems. I know it is not indicative of
SMT as a technique, but some SMT boards out there are quite horridly
soldered, and not saved by being wedged into a through plated hole
first. 

The two great advantages of SMT are for radio frequency devices, and
for use by mass-assembly robots. I don't mind SMT really, but my guess
is the point-to-point hardwired boards of through-hole parts might be
better suited to audio circuits. There are enough analog SMT components
out there now for it to via-ble. The real DIY leap is from perfboard to
making PCBs.

CJ

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