[sdiy] Starting with SMT hand-soldering

[Byron G. Jacquot]

>How about de-soldering ?
>For chips you flood with solder and soak up with wick, or the butane torch method ?
>For chip rx/cx's you heat one side and slide the iron in a sweeping motion to force the part loose ?
>Is there a more elaborate way to do this ?

For 2-pad parts, they make tweezer irons so you can heat both ands at the same time, and simply pluck up the part.

More powerful tweezers can even get some wide chisel blades that can heat both rows of SOICs and similar parts.

For larger chips, you either cut the body off the legs and then remove the legs as you see fit, or you look into a hot-air rework station.  Those use a nozzle the matches the footprint, and directs super hot air onto the solder pads - you blast it for a few seconds, and it falls right off.

Also apropos, and I haven't seen it mentioned yet - use MELF shaped parts when you can find them.  They're like the equivalent through hole parts, but with metal end caps, rather than wire leads.  A little more familiar, and easier to handle because they're not absurdly thin.

Byron Jacquot