SMD Soldering not easy

Today, I tried my hand at SMD soldering for the first time. The result looked OK until I photographed it, and then not so good. I used my Hakko936 with a 900-T-B tip and .032" solder. What do I really need in order to do better?

Thanks.

That is perfectly acceptable if was not overheated. Practice will do the improvements.

As long as the leads are not bridged or shorted, you're golden.

If you are using lead free solder, it will always come out looking terrible.

It looks much better than other first attempts I've seen.

Try 0.020 or smaller solder, and a flux pen to wet the pads before placing component, and on the pins after placing.

The only problem I see is about 3x more solder than needed. Smaller diameter solder will help alleviate that problem, as will a separate liquid flux. The flux will help the solder wick under the leads to the board, leaving just a small fillet of solder from lead to PCB trace.

Practice makes perfect, but good solder of small diameter will help a great deal. I'd suggest Kester or Chip Quick, leaded solder (63/37) makes it easier as well. Lead free solder + new to soldering will end up in cooked components.

Use a Hakko shape BC (bevel truncated cone) tip to drag solder gull wing leads. Something like this:


Surface mount soldering 101:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NN7UGWYmBY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

SMT techniques:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uiroWBkdFY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

That's not a bad job. But if the board contact pins are on 0.1" spacing, it looks as if the chip is an ordinary SO package, so it wasn't too challenging. Try the FTDI FT232RL chip, which is the world's favorite USB-to-serial converter chip. The package it comes in has 28 pins, with 0.65mm spacing (unless you prefer the QFN-32, which hasn't got pins at all). That's almost 40 pins per inch. And there's worse out there.

Your main problem is that the chip is misaligned, makign the bottom 4 pins a bit messy looking. The soldering itself is fine.

It's good practice to hold the chip in place and tack one leg, then check alignment with a magnifier, and if ok then solder the rest of the pins.

I've heard some people use blutack to hold the chip aligned good to get the first tack but I don't use it on small chips as the heat makes it go funny.

THE_RB said:

Your main problem is that the chip is misaligned, makign the bottom 4 pins a bit messy looking. The soldering itself is fine.

It's good practice to hold the chip in place and tack one leg, then check alignment with a magnifier, and if ok then solder the rest of the pins.

I've heard some people use blutack to hold the chip aligned good to get the first tack but I don't use it on small chips as the heat makes it go funny.

Click to expand...

There's an easier way I learned many years ago:

Get some kapton tape which is an amber clear heat proof tape. Take a strip about 1" long and lay it on only one side of the device to be soldered, so one set of tabs (or tab) is in the open. You can lift the part using the tape (hold at each end) and "steer" it to align using the tape then when it's in place, tape it down to hold it while you solder the open terminal(s). Remove the tape and solder the other side.

Part 3 of the soldering tutorial by Dave Jones might be interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9FC9fAlfQE

Thanks for all the input. I have checked out every link and watched every video, and I think I can do a better job next time. I tried to use the LMC7215 breakout assembly in a breadboard that I was building, and it didn't work. I am starting another thread on that subject. Thanks again to each of you.