Hand Soldering

Given a small enough tip you can solder pretty much anything.

They're all hand solderable. The real indicator of difficulty is lead pitch. 50 mils is easy; 20 mils takes more care and skill, and careful post-inspection for solder bridges. Since you're not likely to want to spend a lot of time practicing, try to use dip or larger-pitch parts for now.

The leadless parts are a bitch, and bga's are impossible to hand solder.

What are you building?

John

TDFN has all pins under the device.

Attaching any of the rest to a PCB can be done by hand with a soldering iron and a light touch, but if you're *removing* parts? Only the first four.

You might get the rest off a board with lots of solder wick, but you'll likely take a few traces with it...

As John says, 20 mil (0.5 mm) pitch is quite do-able by hand with a modicum of care. An Optivisor (a.k.a. geek helmet ;-) is useful. A medium tip is also fine; better, actually, for "wave tip" soldering, where a bead of solder is drawn across the package leads.

Some useful tutorials at

If you don't have access to a rework station (I've become a True Believer for hot air), a ChipQuik starter kit might be a good investment if you do work with the many-legged SMT devices.

Good advice...

(This is only needed for small pitch)

You can do all of them. The easiest way I've found(although I'm by far an expert at it) is to pre-solder the pads and remove as much solder from the pads as possible(use wick). Then just put the IC on the pads and heat the leads(use flux). It sticks pretty well and I have yet to have any pins not make good contact. I suppose its not the best method but seems to work well. Trying to solder the pins after the fact is a mess IMO and takes about 10x longer for very low pitch.

I imagine you could also use hot air or some other method but this, IMO, seems the easiest if you don't have something better. You can check for mechanical connection by using a continuity tester. If any pins don't stick then you can always add a little solder to the tip and reheat the pin.

You would be supprised what you can solder. When I first tried SMT I was nervious but its actually not all that difficult once you get the hang of it.

ChipQuik really works for this, although I haven't personally used it on larger than 48 pin LQFP devices (and I prefer hot air now, having gotten the necessary gizmo). It's even possible to re-use the removed device (after cleaning) if it turns out that the problem was elsewhere in the circuit (like THAT ever happens).

Not recommended for more than occasional use, since it's relatively expensive (in the neighborhood of US$5 per foot) and a quad pack probably takes 2" to 4".

Usual disclaimer: just a customer who buys too many gadgets...

A related question from someone who only does the odd (sometimes Very Odd) repair these days.

Can RHoS certified components (Resistors etc) be succesfully soldered with ordinary old solder and reasonable Weller Iron? John G.

I've done all of these by hand, although I tend to use solder paste and a hotplate for most SMT work these days, especially the "FN" packages, where the connections are under the chip. Also, even with the iron, for SMT resistors and capacitors I find it much easier to apply a dab of solder paste to each pad, put the part on it, and then melt the paste with the iron; than to try to use wire solder for that task.

A fine tip on the iron and some form of magnifier (I also use an optivisor) is key to doing small parts by hand.

As for size, I've hand soldered (with an iron) down to 01005 caps (0.016" x 0.008"), and 0.4mm (16 mil) pitch ICs. It's not fast, though. For most boards, using a stencil, solder paste, and a cheap hotplate or electric skillet will be much faster and easier.

Absolutely. Standard solder works just fine. You just can't call it RoHS and sell it in Europe...

Thanks. I do not sell things anywhere, only do repairs and gadget type things, often for disabled clients thru a Sydney Australia charity called Technical Aid to the Disabled.

John G.

If you get a kick out of watchmaking, egg implantation, keyhole gynaecology and have suitable kit, then all the types are approachable. For normal humans, DIP, SIP. The remainder are spawn of the devil, not meant to be touched by human hand and an utter pain the arse.