[sdiy] Starting with SMT hand-soldering

[Dave Manley]

 On Thu 10/10/28 12:17 PM , "David G. Dixon" dixon at interchange.ubc.ca sent:
> > I'd like to try my hand at laying out and
> hand-soldering an SMT board and> thought I'd stop in here to see what advice I
> could get from those that> have done it.
> 
> Go see Rick Moranis about getting yourself shrunk...?  :o)

Short of doing that:

For chip resistors/caps: holding the part with the tweezers, solder down one end.  Move on to the next component, only soldering down one end of all the caps and resistors, then make a final pass soldering the other end, and touching up as necessary.  Some people will object to this, but I find this is the fastest.

For leaded ICs: solder down one corner, then solder down the opposite (diagonal) corner.  If all the leads aren't perfectly lined up on the pads, adjust the corners until you get it right.  Then solder all the other leads, using lots of solder flux, dragging the wetted iron while applying more solder, solder all the leads on one side in a single pass.  With practice you can get very good at this and not need to do much touch up, or cleanup with solder wick.  There's no reason to solder one lead at a time!  Don't do it!  :-)

-Dave