Are there any special tools I can purchase to help with this?
Are there any special techniques that I can employ to do this?
Tools:
- A soldering iron with a good tip. The tip should be small enough so you can touch one pad without touching the others, but no smaller than that. Ultra small tips are hard to use.
- Small solder 0.3mm is good.
- Some tweezers or other tool to move the chip around and hold it in the right spot.
- Liquid or gel flux
- Good quality solder wick (chemtronics)
Techniques:
- Add flux to the pcb pads (optional if the PCB and IC are clean and brand new, but it still helps)
- Hold the chip in the right place with a tool. Add a tiny bit of solder to the iron tip and then touch the iron to one of the corner legs of the IC. This should solder that leg so the chip wont move around.
- Repeat this process on all legs.
- Done.
- If you slip with the iron and bridge two of the pads just put some solder wick on top then gently push down with the iron on top of the wick. It will remove all the solder. (you may need to add a little solder to the iron first to get things moving)
If you cant get your eyes to focus close enough to the PCB to see what you're doing then buy some reading glasses, or ideally, a desk mount magnification lamp