I have a board with mixed surface mount parts and thru hole parts. Furthermore, there are smt parts on both sides of the board. I would like to have the smt stuff soldered on by the assembly house, and i can solder the few thru-hole parts on myself, so to avoid extra assembly costs.
For those of you familiar with the assembly process, how do they do it? Do they place the SMT stuff on one side first, solder it, then the other side and solder that? What do they do with all the vias and thruhole holes? Do they put some type of latex-like gum on them to prevent the smt soldering process from filling up those holes?
Reason why i ask is that it may actually take more effort to prevent the thru-hole pads from getting filled up with solder during the initial smt parts soldering, that I may as well just let them stuff the thru-hole stuff too.
Thanks, Mike