Hi All, just accidentally found out today that this post has been replied recently, I did that experiment back in February and not it is October, I am still learning, however I've been hand soldering under microscope every couple days day since then and now looking back I'm thinking it is not as scary as it seems all the way down to 01005, 008004 would still require individual attention but also very doable.
If I had to give an advise to anyone doing exactly same experiment for fun, I'd say you need:
- Good tweezers, that one on the picture I bought 2 years ago for about $6 - $7, I also have couple sets of those relatively cheap ones, the one you can buy off ebay for like few dollars for bunch, those are good for nothing, they flex too much, they look sharp at first glance but under 10x you can see that tips are uneven, no feedback at all, I only use them to pick dried silicone glue off a tip of nozzle. Those that I have in the picture have nice sharp even tips, non magnetic, made from some kind of nice steel, I think all small footprint SMD rework starts with good tweezers.
- Do not drink coffee, lift any weights, move lawn, or do any physical labor before this project, this will make your hands shaky and won't get anything right, you can pick a component from the tray, etc, but once you place it on board and need to hold it steady or nudge it a little your movements won't be as precise as needed.
- Get PCB pads size right, as you can see in my experiment pads for 01005 and 008004 spread apart more than they suppose to so those components we constantly pulled to one side more than the other so I had to constantly correct it into place bumping off center, etc. I think with right pad sizes it would have been much simpler.
- Do not heat it with hot air from the top, even at slowest airspeed it will blow those 01005 and 008004 right off, apply heat from the bottom under components.
- Do not try applying solder paste to 01005 and 008004 pads, its just too small, apply flux, then drag some solder with iron over pads it will make a solder bump on each pad, then place your component there and when you reheat solder from the bottom it will grab your component.
- And of course you need a microscope, non of those head mountable magnification glasses will do the job in my opinion, I used SE400Z with 20x for this project and that was just right.
My three favorite sizes now are 0603, 0402 and 0201 with most favorite being 0402
0603 is nice and juicy package with, resistors have printed values, capacitors have nice large values, easy to grab, easy to place, easy to flip if its upside down right on the spot, pad is big enough so applying solder paste is easy, etc
0402 is my favorite, easy to maneuver under microscope, pad is still big enough to apply solder paste, it is very space saving, so when I design circuits I can fit more parts per square inch so to speak, love it.
0201 I like very much too for its space saving abilities, but unfortunately moving it from tray to board, grabbing with tweezers, etc, is more challenging when you need to do bunch of them, one or two, okay, but when you need to populate a full board it will be annoying, also flipping them right way is a nightmare, they stick to tweezers etc,
Those are my personal thoughts and observations, it may or may not work for others but hopefully it can help you a little.
I have to redo this experiment again now as a skills refresher
Hi All, just wanted to share cool experiment I did today, I soldered few capacitors today on same board starting from 0805 down to 008004
Just curious: What size of tip, and what diameter of solder did you use? Did you add extra flux?