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Please don't tell me that! I am just getting back into this hobby after putting it on hold for about 30 years. There are a lot more cool things out there then there was 30 years ago. Including those wonderful MCUs.Pretty cool.
Through Hole is going away quick lately.
I'm sure Microchip will still be producing through hole variants of their most popular PICs for quite some time. Resistors and capacitors will always have through hole variants for size and power reasons. Newer composite System on Chip and specialized controllers are only released as BGA, some as QFN, but not many other choices.Please don't tell me that! I am just getting back into this hobby after putting it on hold for about 30 years. There are a lot more cool things out there then there was 30 years ago. Including those wonderful MCUs.
My hands are not very steady and my eyes are not good as they used to be, I doubt I could tolerate anything other then through hole.
A lot of stuff is just NICER when it is compact, and Larger surface mount components, such as SOIC are easier to make a PCB for and solder compared to a DIP (1/2 size roughly). You no longer have to worry about forgetting to mirror image the bottom side of the board!
Drilling (reduction in) is a HUGE advantage of SMD. The "Large" surface mount devices are good to go, even with mildly nervous hands, solder wick, buy a lot of it.What about for a newbie with shaky hands? How hard is it really? I would think one big advantage is no more drilling.
Why do DIPs still exist? Do engineers still use them in prototyping?
Actually my hands don't shake all that much though I would never make a surgeon. My brother is far worse. He just came to visit and wow, he is getting shakier as he grows older. He would never wield a soldering iron, just a knife (he is a chef ).
If you look hard enough most of the essential stuff is still available as through hole and while I can deal with the 0.050 pitch SMD ICs I'd have to figure out how to build a cheap IR reflow system or buy one of those expensive irons that blows super hot air to deal with anything smaller. At least solder paste/flux is easy enough to buy nowadays as is that stuff (forget the name) that makes it easy to remove large SMD packages from a board.Please don't tell me that! I am just getting back into this hobby after putting it on hold for about 30 years. There are a lot more cool things out there then there was 30 years ago. Including those wonderful MCUs.
My hands are not very steady and my eyes are not good as they used to be, I doubt I could tolerate anything other then through hole.
The biggest thing is the stencils to apply the solder paste/flux, which acts like a 'tacky glue' until it is heated. Getting the stencil lined up perfectly and the correct amount of paste laid down is one step, aligning the BGA so it doesn't smear is another, and heating it to fuse is still another.I would love to try some BGAs at home. I've seen many How-To's and tutorials, but am still uneasy about it. I bet there's a lot of technique that can't be covered in a simple instruction manual.
I never said everything was going BGA, just that through hole was vanishing for a lot of new things.I think most will have a variety of package size's though. To say everythings gonna go BGA I don't believe. Hell I'm sure something better then BGA is bound to appear soon enough so Its not really even worth worrying about now.
by Jake Hertz
by Duane Benson
by Duane Benson
by Jake Hertz