how do you...

toothpick, glue

If your hand positioning precision (jitter/shake) is significant vs. the pitch of the lands, you are basically screwed. Get a mechanical positioning assist fixture. Else,

Try to reduce jitter by resting part of your hand on something, so you are just controlling the lever arm to your finger tips.

If you can get one corner tack soldered, and the rest of the contacts reasonably lined up with the other lands, then you are golden. Just get solder to flow on the rest of them with lots of flux and perhaps for something that tiny, just a miniscule droplet of solder on the iron tip. Alternately, the excessive solder blob wicking several pads at once, followed by solder bridge removal with a wick.

Good lighting, magnification, tweezers.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom laser drivers and controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation

I have adopted a small vacuum pump for which I use a small metal tube (stainless tiny one) and it generates enough vacuum to hold the little sucker inplace while using it also as a pressure point to hold it down while soldering.

I reach in the stash and pick on up via the tube. I have a small micro valve I hold in by hand as part of the handle to release the vacuum In case I need to drop it.

When I was at Semco (Silver mica/dip/chip caps) we used this method in the pick& place X,Y,Z automation machine along with video cam to locate small mica bits, move the tube in place and active the vac to pick it up and transport it over to the stacking frame.

So I use this same method to also hold those tiny components along with a 47x boom scope.

Jamie

Lay the board flat, add some solder to one of the pads (I use a corner pad), put the array offset on the board with the corner to be soldered first next to the pad. Heat and slide the component onto the pad, and straighten with tweezers. Solder the rest of the pads. If you're forced to use RoHS solder, find a new line of work. The stuff doesn't flow any better than 1.6 gallon toilets.

I'm wondering if you can use a heat gun and reflow it with hot air. I have found that this makes removing SMT components trivial. If your board is single sided, a hot plate and hot air works wonders.

Cheers

What others have said, except that with a package that small it may be easier to purposely glob solder all over each side, then suck back the excess with solder wick.

This thing is so light that a puff of air will blow it across the room...and it has no real leads on the package to allow sticking a corner and twisting it straight to get the rest of the thing stuck. Not to bad getting it positioned correctly, just that it acts like a flea as soon as it is touched.

This may be a crazed idea, it is sort of doing that to me just now, but I'm thinking about a really strong light and a magnifying glass to apply some no-touch heat to this beast.

Sewing needle, rubber cement, fine-tip iron.

Mark L. Fergerson

One thing I do is put a little bit of solder on the pad and tack down one end. Then solder the other end in and do a proper on the tacked side.

The leads and pads where you want to heat are all shiny and the body where you don't want heat so much is black.

I do 603 arrays with a hot air gun. Mine has adjustable airflow, turn it way down. I "pre-heat" the area with it turned up, then turn it down and apply paste, place the part and hit it with the hot air again. You can also hold the part down with some tweezers until the solder melts. That will usually keep it in place. If not, try some of the re-work flux that Quick Chip makes. It's really thick and will hold 603s in place

Right. Tin one side, hold with tweezers, heat the pad till the solder reflows.

I often use a small binder clip to hold tweezers shut--you slide it up and down the blades to get the right amount of holding force. Works much better than self-closing tweezers. (You probably want the thicker-gauge cheap Pakistani tweezers, and the clip goes almost at the handle end.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Yeah, not too practical. I came up with a plan that is at least testable without spending too much time just to see if it works. Idea is to place the board on milling machine table, get everything positioned using table feed handles, then gently hold the part down by lowering the quill with a delrin rod in the collet just touching the center of the chip. Of course, this only can work if one has a milling machine available...which I do.

That solves one part of the problem...but the real problem is that I'm not very well equipped for this sort of thing. Too many years doing embedded code I guess. So I either get creative or spend some money on better tools.

Heh. My hot air gun is about as controllable as a leaf blower...on/off, and way too much air flow. I know what you are saying is true, just that my immediately available tools are not up to the task.

Well, there is hope. In spite of getting the package a little bit mis-registered on the pads, I did get it soldered down, with a bit of fussing to remove accidental connections, it is good to go. The milling machine table & hold down with the spindle trick does work, but is still a pain...

bill

Bill Martin Inscribed thus:

I use a croc clip with a length of flat brass strip soldered into one jaw ! Clip it to the edge of the board and the shaped tip of the brass strip acts as a clamp. My biggest one has a four inch reach.