Amateur electronics in danger due to lack of DIP ICs

f stuffed into a "breadboard", is rapidly decreasing. I have not been in a position where I needed to prototype a new design (as a hobbyist) in years. But now I do and while searching for a >10MSPS A/D and a FIFO memory to us e with it I am seeing nothing available with pins. What are home builders d oing these days about this? Is there a company that will solder these surfa ce mount chips onto a small circuit board for a reasonable price? I bought one of those SSOP adapter boards and there is no way I can solder those tin y pins without bridging solder over the gap between pins. What are people d oing?

Use a breakout board -

Probably AlcoJet from Alconix.

.

Joe Gwinn

Bellin sells snap-apart boards with a variety of adapter types. The cost per site is a lot lower than those.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc   trk 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.   
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

I've found it to be possible to avoid tombstoning, or at least cut it way down, by making sure there's a similar amount of copper on both sides of each part. If one end of a part is soldered to a large copper area without thermal reliefs while the other has a single 5-mil trace, it's almost guaranteed. If the copper distribution is well-balanced, it essentially never happens.

For hand work, 0402 is really no less manageable than 0603. An advantage is parts availability. The big lesson I learned from the last MLCC shortage was that when the vendors drop the balls, they drop them in decreasing order of size. They shut down their 1206 and 0603 lines before they shut down 0402 and smaller.

0201 is manageable with a microscope. I've avoided them on PCBs in the past, but will probably start using more of them for prototyping, having been impressed at how convenient they are at bypassing QFNs. They fit right between the peripheral pads and the central ground pad: .

At that point, dead-bug construction offers better SI than the best PCB layout, at least as far as bypassing is concerned. :)

-- john, KE5FX

Tin whiskers aside, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with 30 year old parts. I should mention I'm speaking as an amateur experimenter, not a cutting edge designer working on current commercial projects.

--

"Andrey Semyonovitch really was rather stupid; he attached himself to the progressive cause and 'our younger generation' from enthusiasm. He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animate abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion, only to vulgarise it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

They're still practically invisible AFAIC. I don't use parts I could accidentally inhale.

--

"Andrey Semyonovitch really was rather stupid; he attached himself to the progressive cause and 'our younger generation' from enthusiasm. He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animate abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion, only to vulgarise it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

The US8/VSSOP8 is a dreadful package to hand-solder, unfortunately some nice parts like very high speed flip-flops seem to only come in that one.

I had to make my own US8 adapters. Some really nice parts come only in US8, like 1 ns cmos gates and flops, and some outrageous triple buffers.

I included a bypass cap on that one. There are some variants.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc   trk 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.   
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

Get some decent optics and tweezers and some sample kits and practice a little. It's not hard.

Nothing interesting comes in DIPS any more.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc   trk 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.   
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

Be happy that some still have pins. The BGA and QFN packages are becoming dominant.

Aren't many of the so-called builders or makers actually programming ready-made Arduino boards? So it is irrelevant how difficult it is to build such a board; you just order a finished one.

There must be something wrong with your fine motor skills, and this is not an offence. Soldering a SO-xx package is not an issue. TSSOP requires some attention but is not a problem as well. Same with 0.8mm pitch TQFP. The 0.5mm starts to be a real problem, but not because of the act of soldering itself, but the difficulty of ensuring that the joint has been done right. With a SO, you clearly see that with a naked eye.

And you can always resort to a hot-air gun.

Best regards, Piotr

Just so. But he doesn't want to because "My sideline is rescuing and fixing up RF boat anchors, so I very rarely encounter SMDs at all, thankfully."

But he still whines about his choice to avoid learning how other people in a similar position have succeeded.

Anything built in the last few decades is going to be mostly surface mount. But then we tend to throw things away now, and not repair them. Almost nobody publishes schematics any more.

Boat anchors are getting to be worthless. There is so much smaller and cheaper and better stuff. I have some beautiful old Tek scopes that I'd hate top throw in the dumpster, but a 500 MHz color Rigol makes them useless.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc   trk 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.   
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

That's scary. Where are the kids that actually like and understand electricity?

One needs a steady hand to work with small surfmount parts. Some people don't have that.

Yuk. They blow parts away and toast everything in sight.

How do you solder a TSSOP with a hot air gun?

Get a Mantis and a Metcal.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc   trk 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.   
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

They've moved on to software and computers.

Question John:

I assume you cut your layouts with a Dremel tool? How do you get your lines so straight and smooth? Do you use a guide or something. My hands are far too unsteady to get anywhere that neat,

John

Visit any Makers club or warrior robot event and see just how wrong you are.

John

You can't be the real Neon John--he never top-posted. Who are you really? ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com

No idea, but here might be a clue:

Does one need a steady hand to solder a 1.27mm pitch SO-16? It's not 0402.

You have the Kapton foil to protect the surroundings. With a preheater, the required amount of the soldering heat is actually not that big. The aha moment comes when one discovers that the hot-air gun has more settings than min and max.

I wet the pads with solder, put the part next to the footprint to heat up the board and the part, grab it with tweezers, put it in place and heat everything just enough to melt the solder bumps. Then I gradually increase the distance to cool it off gently, and I'm done. TSSOP is easy. MSOP requires a microscope for proper placement. The parts mortality rate during prototyping is relatively high, so these rework skills are essential.

Best regards, Piotr

Phil Hobbs wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@electrooptical.net:

It was not exactly a top post. He did frame his question above what he quoted from Larkin, but top posters flat put everything above the entire previous post.