Comment on SMD Dispenser Cartridge
thantik@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Have you checked out Stephen Hawes on YouTube? Or maybe the OpenPnP project?
Regardless, this is awesome. I moved away from doing by-hand soldering on prototypes, as places like JLCPCB and PCBWAY have services which are just so stupid cheap now that I can’t really pass them up.
MapleEngineer@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I know OpenPnP. We have talked about it but most of the work I do is very small run. I hand solder everything down to 0402s and TQFPs with 0.4 mm pitch in one to three or four units. I’ve considered buying a hand PnP unit and I may at some point. I just upgraded to a new Hakko dual head soldering station which makes hand soldering stupid easy. I’ve pendant for a few years of hand soldering in me.
Most of what I do is repairs and rework with a fair amount of prototyping.
For any production runs the guys I work with have PCBWAY do the populating for them.
thantik@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Ah, I haven’t had to do SMD repair in a long time so it totally flew over my head. Those tweezer soldering irons are gooooood stuff. So much faster to remove tiny little caps and resistors.
MapleEngineer@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Tweezers are the bomb. I’ve been doing a lot of repairs to old gaming consoles and hand helds. That actually paid for the new soldering station. Removing the surface mount caps without tweezers is possible but not easy.