Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 2:13 PM, <cs6061@...> wrote:

Soldering smt parts is not all that hard, it helps to have a zoom binocular microscope, a steady hand, a good soldering iron and fine solder  with a (RMA) flux.

Flux is the key to soldering chips.  And you can find lots of good SMT soldering videos on youtube.
 

I try and keep my SMT components on the larger side say 0805 or above for resistors and caps.  I have done 0603's but they a lot harder to do then 0805's.

1206s or 0805s are a good size to start with.  Here's my 11yo son soldering 1206s.  He'd never soldered before:

  http://capnstech.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/playpause-3-assembly-and-programming.html

I think SMT is actually easier to do the through hole,  no leads to bend or clip.

Me too.  If you can get over the mystery, SMT is great.

Mitch.