[sdiy] Need help with a SMD kit (OT?)

[David G Dixon]

What's all this "flipping the board over" and "parts falling out" business?
I stuff all resistors and diodes, hold a small piece of wood over them, flip
once and set down on the piece of wood, solder all joints, then snip clean.
Then I do all sockets, again, stuff, flip once, solder all joints.  Then I
finish with all the random parts that have random heights.  Soldering TH
joints takes about 2 seconds per joint once you get a rhythm going.  Plus, I
can stuff parts in front of the TV in my easy chair, then carry the stuffed
board out to the garage for soldering if I want to.  That's my usual plan
when it's too warm or cold in the garage.
 
Parts do require some preparation, but I lay out all of my boards so that
the resistor leads are 0.4" apart, and for the standard 1/4W resistor, all
this requires is to bend the leads at a 90-degree angle to the resistor body
with my fingers.  Then I snip the leads to about 1 cm.  Sometimes I bend all
then snip all, and sometimes I bend and snip each one at a time.  This I
consider a part of the procedure of retrieving the resistors from their
respective packages.
 
For SMD, one has to get the resistor off of a tape.  9 times out of 10, I
drop the resistor during this process.  With TH, I can prepare all of my
parts, lay them out on the bench if I want to and compare them with my BOM.
Then I can stuff them in a completely organized fashion.  I always find the
stuffing of my own boards to be a completely pleasurable process, very
relaxing.  I could literally do it all day (and I plan to after I retire
from my day job in 2020).


  _____  

From: Synth-diy [mailto:synth-diy-bounces at synth-diy.org] On Behalf Of mark
verbos
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2017 2:49 AM
To: synth-diy at synth-diy.org
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Need help with a SMD kit (OT?)


I'm with Roman. Sure, I have hot tweezers, hot air, a pick and place
machine..

But I switched entirely to SMD about 10 years ago. Initially used 1206
passives. I will NEVER go back. It takes way more time to assemble through
hole, with all the flipping the board over and parts falling out/sticking up
too high. The PCBs are way more cramped and annoying to layout in TH. I
build all of my prototypes with mostly 0603 passives by hand using nothing
more than a fine tipped iron. Also, I use lead free, organic water clean
flux. I wash the PCB with hot distilled water and the results look like a
professional machine built PCB. I don't mess with breadboards, I just go
from a drawing to a PCB. When something needs to be reworked, I use
wire-wrap wire and hang parts off the board. Then make the changes to the
PCB file for the future. 

Do a few projects with it, and you'll never go back. I promise. 


Mark



On Jul 19, 2017, at 1:58 AM, David G Dixon <dixon at mail.ubc.ca> wrote:


SMD was developed for robots.  I don't feel a need to hone a skill to
compete with a robot, thanks.



On 18 Jul 2017, at 22:23, David G Dixon <dixon at mail.ubc.ca> wrote:


This post sums up why I simply will not do SMD by hand.  Not... worth...
the... frustration.



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