ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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Hand soldering of surface mount components is possible by hand, I've just never seen it done first hand. I'm sure I've read that a few people have swapped dash LED's over e.t.c. on here before, so how did you do it?
Having a little trouble finding guides that make sense to me - is it very time consuming?
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
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It's possible with a really fine tipped soldering iron.
There are better ways if you are doing it in any volume.
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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Yup, fine tip and steady hands.
Old man works with a guy that does all of their surface mounted stuff for prototypes; is ex-army bomb disposal which I guess helps  Apparently he's quite impressive to watch, especially when doing surfaced processors/dsps etc
[Edited on 06-01-2012 by Dom]
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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I've got proper shaky hands 
Basically, I'd like to turn this into a single board with a nice 28 pin header on the back of it and a load of SMD LED's on the other side:
http://edcs.me/files/2011/12/IMG_0862.jpg
Takes HOURS to assemble it at the moment.
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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Knock up the board with tracks and header and just stick to the usual cylindrical packaged LEDs; as mounting SMT LEDs will be a royal pain by hand. Unless you're planning to get a fair few done, in which case send it out to get knocked up with SMT LEDs (probably cheaper to get it done abroad).
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
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Build a reflow oven out an an old toaster, that's all the rage, seriously.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Hack-a-Toaster-Oven-for-Reflow-Soldering/
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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Idea is to knock one up as a prototype by hand and then hopefully I can sell a few meaning I can meet minimum order requirements to get a batch made. I've got access to an 'oven' so I could do as John suggests with that actually.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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One issue is I'm positively shit at Eagle  
Designing a dual layer control board is easy, but to get it to route on a single layer seems like an art form.
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John
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I've also read that a non modified oven works fine, switch it on for a bit, switch it off, leave it X seconds then open the door, gets close enough to the solder profile.
I'll have one of these btw if making a kit ed, easier than sourcing the bits myself 
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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The oven I was thinking of is a bit more precise - it's purpose is for curing adhesives and carbon fibre so it's nice and accurate and has a built in timer and thermometer. Should do the job for knocking together a prototype.
Still need to re-design the control board if I'm going to be 100% happy, but I might rage quit and do a batch as is to start with. Would be a lot easier! Watch this space 
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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quote:
Originally posted by ed
One issue is I'm positively shit at Eagle
Designing a dual layer control board is easy, but to get it to route on a single layer seems like an art form.
You tried AutoCAD? Not sure if the recent versions have needed libraries but I used it years ago for doing simple layouts and found it reasonably straight forward for routing. Only issue was that you had to knock up your own libraries/components.
Never used Eagle although i've heard a few stories about it being a bit of a pig.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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I'm not sure it's the software, more of a lack of skill/tallent.
Getting there though! I think I need to think things through a bit more because it's not a magic piece of software that does everything for you!
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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The SMT components are actually remarkably easy to solder down and I've figured Eagle out. Slightly cryptic picture alert:
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