I’ve been avoiding using SMT parts with really small pins. I haven’t had any trouble soldering packages with pins on 0.05-inch centers, but I was leery of trying anything smaller. However, more and more chips are available only in TSSOP (and smaller) packages, so I figured I might as well give it a try. I’m happy to say that it’s entirely feasible, and not even difficult. Here’s a photo of a chip with pins on 0.65mm centers which I hand-soldered:
(The penny is there to give you a sense of scale. Also, the holes at the far right are spaced 0.1 inches apart, for a standard ribbon-cable header.) I did use a 5x illuminated magnifier while working but aside from that I used the usual stuff: standard soldering iron, flux pen, and very fine solder.
I’ve got another PC board in the works that has some packages with pins on 0.5mm centers. The pins look like thick hairs. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes with those. I’m assuming it will be more or less the same as soldering the chip shown above.
UPDATE: See this post for links to a number of helpful videos about SMT soldering.
what’s the project? transport buttons….hmmm!
The project is a sequencer–sort of a recreation of a CV step sequencer done with contemporary parts and technologies (i.e. rotary encoders, microcontrollers, etc.). It’s been my spare-time project on and off for several years. I’ll put up more info about it when there’s something worth showing.
nifty. look forward to seeing more about it.