It's this here - not stereo, but good enough for me (better than the lense I used before):
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How on earth -- without depth?
It's not that hard if you are used to video operation. You get depth information from sharpness of the tip: soldering area is in focus, the tip comes in blurred and gets sharper as it approaches the surface.
Did you see the one I linked to in post#6. It's 200x200, and I wouldn't want it any smaller.
That one can also set to soldering temperature, which not all do.
Leo..
- There are very good videos on YouTube.
- Example Marc Siegel videos are a bit old but they are top notch.
- For hand soldering, make a Solder Paste Dispenser.
That's good to know. Is that driven by the largest size of board you would work with? I've never used any kit for hobby SMD work other than a fine tipped iron and tweezers. Knowing almost zero on the subject, I'd interested to know if with a smaller plate one could solder a board in 2 stages by heating one half and fixing the components and repeating for the other half?
Many of the DIY laundry-iron SMD-hotplate control projects look safer.
I tried to post a link but that's not working. Don't know if this is what you're talking about but it's a good start to SMD soldering technique. I did mine with an iron and rework heater. If you don't burn any parts up you get a blinky LED thing.
Yes, it possible do it in many steps, with my 7x7cm hotplate I easy solder a 15x15 boards.
Heating up is a very fast process, it takes 1-2 minutes, so you don't even need a special table, you can hold the board with tweezers and move it around the heater, heating up the areas one by one
I didn't really intend for this to devolve into a "how to build SMT", but...
All you extolling the virtues of hot plates - are you using stencils to apply paste, or do you have some other neat method?
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I normally use an old toaster oven to do SMT reflow. Although I do have a preheater hotplate, it doesn't get hot enough to reflow a board.
I use stencils to apply paste. I used to use a syringe, but mylar stencils are cheap from OSHPark and stainless steel stencils from JLC PCB are even cheaper, IIRC. They are much faster than a syringe and use much less paste. The JLC PCB ones come already mounted in a frame.
- I just cannot get myself to put components into a hot oven when all that’s needed is to solder the leads.
- Hot plates are my poison, I don’t see any negative in them.
- As for getting solder paste on SMD pads, I have used a stencil but with my small quantities of PCBs, I use a home made solder paste dispenser.
- When it comes to I.C.s, just run a bead of solder paste down the toe of the leads, use hot air or drag soldering an iron to finish the job.
- I actually like hand soldering SMDs as seen in my example here.
- The actual process is faster than in the video as I had to do a a lot to keep the demonstration going.
When it comes to SMT - has anybody tried the assembly service from JLCPCB? I'm playing with thought on trying it but did not have the patience to get into the toolchain for kicad yet ...
I order from JLCPCB but haven't used their assembly service. I make boards for myself and I have a bit of a mental block paying for 5 boards to be assembled when in reality I may only need 1 or 2.
I know it's likely minimal cost but I'm kinda stuck fighting against additional cost.
In reality I might try and order with assembly but just the SMD Rs and Cs etc and do the chips myself.
Looping back to the subject of the discussion, I first got into electronics with nothing more than a cheap soldering iron, a pair of side cutters and a drill bit borrowed from my father to cut tracks on veroboard - he was a carpenter so I could outsource cutting the veroboard down to him!
In my opinion, with SMT the bar to entry is raised somewhat. You can still solder 0805 and 0603 devices as well as some of the less fiddly chips with reasonable pin spacing. I have to use reading specs to focus correctly for close-up work and a thin solder also helps a lot too. The addition of some angled tweezers is the only other tool I use.
Then there is the question of how adept the user is at wielding a soldering iron. I can see that for a beginner, going straight to SMT soldering could put them off the hobby.
As can be seen from this discussion, some of us have skills (and the tools required) beyond electronics and can fabricate additional tools to help them with SMT work.
Some chips these days are relatively expensive and having the ability to reuse/recycle them for other projects because they are in DIP packages has to be a plus for those of us on limited budgets.
As @westfw says in the original post, being able to program them in a known working environment helps progress the project as well as avoiding having to first debug the issue of not being able to program the device in-situ.
The real benefit is time. I used to sell a counter board that has dozens of components. It would take me almost an hour in total to assemble one unit if I soldered everything by hand. Using a toaster oven, that dropped to about 15 minutes. I saved even more time if I reflowed 2 or 3 at once.
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You do the exact same thing with the hot plate process i.e. the whole PCB is soldered at once in about 30 seconds with the leads being heated.
Oh, OK. I thought you were advocating for using a soldering iron.
IN that case I agree with you.
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No, I just find the hand soldering process puts me into a Zen moment.
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Here is another idea that works well.
In this example, the hot plate gets the board temperature up and the hot air finishes the job.
