Through Hole vs. Surface Mount

Ok, but it hasn't corroded or otherwise tainted one lone solder joint in years. If it does cause a failure 300 years down the road I think I could live with that :-)

• Interesting; Absolutely nothing but solder, nothing to remove oxides, etc?? Then it DOES NOT CLEAN and so that is why it is called "no clean"??

We use it for everything, never had a problem either.

I take "no-clean" to mean "do not clean". I have heard (here) of problems when cleaning is attempted, the insulating component is washed away leaving an ionic residue which can absorb water and conduct. Or something.

One advantage is being able to knock up a simple board to try something _now_ (or in a couple of hours) rather than in three days, but this is only really applicable to small hacks.

Other than that it's not worth the hassle.

Nial

only

cheap

hardware store.

cost per

than $50

service

I think that it kind of is, it really does separate the ones=20 who love electronics from the "ticket to a high paying job"=20 types. Of course there are those in between as well.

And here's the stuff soldered down:

Nope, no SMT caps. I'll stock up some day, but at the moment I can't justify buying all the resistors and caps and diodes and transistors I'd need to build complete SMT circuits.

Tim

Doable with the right tools, hot-air soldering tool, 5 mil nickel wire=20 and desolder the power pad last.

=20

and=20

I too would find nearly 40 pins to the inch (0.65 mm c-c) rather = daunting.

Even then I had no problems. Many times in my lab I lash up jigs, on Monday for example a tester to run transformers at 50Hz, 60Hz, 400Hz or wherever. That stuff gets a beating over time, alligator clips are attached to soldered areas over and over again so things become scraped. Never a problem.

Well, all I can tell you is that I use it for years, so do clients, and there are no horror stories in this here neck of the woods :-)

Then why doesn't anything corrode out here? Even stuff where there is extensive scratching by alligator clips never developed a problem.

Now RoHS solder, that's a whole 'nother story. Don't get me started ...

I do not and have never tried "no clean" as there were too many horror stories.

Check! That is the glop i was talking about.

We use RoHS solder and a no-clean flux. Hows that grab ya'. ;-)

I've never made my own PCBs, at least with a wet process (our college had a lathe that turned out circuits from copper-clad). I've used a fair amount of wire-wrap, though. ...not that I do a lot of electronics for myself. I've always got enough of it at work.

For small hacks I solder wire to components on perf board.

That gives me the goose bumps ;-)

Europeons. What are you going to do?

Now that I've got PCBs down fairly well, I'm more inclined to make a proper PCB than wire up perf board.

It's hard to beat the density of perf board, though. You can pack components wherever you want, overlapping as much as you want. DRC would explode.

Downside is, you have to place everything as you go, so you can end up making some really awful circuits with way too many long jumpers, and it takes forever when you've got a big circuit to wire up.

Tim

We have a "prototype machine" for PCBs where I work now but it's never been used. ;-/ I really don't do much prototyping but there are some tools I'd like to build. The wire and perf board isn't very rugged. I hate debugging my test fixtures every time I use them.

I did say "small hacks". ;-)