[sdiy] Moving to Surface Mount - lots of questions

[Tom Arnold]

On Wed, Dec 07, 2011 at 11:30:43AM -0500, Harry Bissell wrote:
> I'd recommend 0603 resistors. They are half the size of the 1206 package. By the time you use 1206
> parts, you eat so much board space that there is little to no benefit over thru-hole parts.  The ICs are
> usually quite tiny and the PCB layout will be easier with passive components that sort of match that scale.
> 

I use 1206s when converting from a thru-hole to an SMT on an existing
design.  It just saves time manually populating.  With a full redesign I
agree go with smaller and gain the space at the expense of huge part ease.

I just did a simple board to convert 3.3v to 5v bidirectional logic, board
took 8 FETs and 16 resistors.  I did it 1206 and etched my own board.  Going
much smaller and I would have had issues on traces.  I was already pushing
it.  Out of 9 boards in the array I etched, 6 were usable ( I only needed
one and I built 2 ).  The parts were so large I could have just used
stripboard...

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