"I'll take a bit of solder and put it on pin 1" - as you put it on pin 16 lol. A nice no-clean flux pen will do wonders for amateurs soldering SMD. Flow a decent amount of flux around and the whole soldering and cleanup process is easier especially on smaller devices including passives. You don't need to blob a bunch of solder on if using flux either but as you said if it works that's what counts.
I keep a ball of that office removable mounting putty (for posters or what ever) on my desk to hold small boards or components.. faster than the vice most times.
Today, still wanted by the government, he survives as a solderer of fortune. If you need custom hardware mods... if no one else can help... and if you can find him... maybe you can hire... The Heck
At 5:30 you can see it quite clearly shimmering around the solder joints. He is using solder that has a flux core and it is so much tha the board is still coated in semi liquid flux even after he has soldered all the pins at that side. No need to use outside flux on new components usually. If it helps you solder better, by all means use it though. Just make sure to clean the board afterwards (also a good advice when using rosin solder, but more importan the more flux there is), since flux is often conductive and can lead to electrical issues.
Yeah, solder frequently gets bulky and does not flow in this video. Definitely need more flux. The amount of flux included inside the solder wire core is not sufficient.
There are three rules: - More Heat - Less Solder - Flux is Magic I actually just learned SMD soldering a few months ago and now I can solder 0402 resistors and QFN chips with ease. Its really not hard so long as you use magnification and keep your hand steady by resting your hand against the table, so that your tweezers don't move while you are soldering. Also, you can use the blunt end of a cotton swab to hold IC chips in place. Its really helpful for the QFP chips!
There is a DIY guitar pedal company called BYOC (Build Your Own Clone) that has some mini pedals you can assemble - but one some I saw you have to solder a surface mount chip. This tutorial will come in handy if I decide to assemble one in the future. Thanks Ben!
It looks like your solder wire is too thick, too old or not fluxed right. You’re getting big blobs with just touching the iron for a short time.. could also be too hot, but I bet you’ll have better results and more fun with just testing different solder wire.
I like to flood the board with flux, you can drag the solder trough the pads with the iron and the solder will only flow trough the pads and the legs of the components, no need for solder wick, and them I just clean with some isopropyl alcohol and a tooth brush. I used to think that SMD was impossible to hand solder, but with a good soldering iron, with a really thin tip and flux is really easy, just need patience.
Even with shitty light and no magnification it should be possible to do it :D I've managed once to solder one of those big smd packages that has a shitton of pins spaced ~1mm apart with an big soldering tip, some flux and a lot of patience. (oh and i didn't have solder wick at that time, that was quite nerve racking.) The only thing that one really needs is patience when soldering these small parts ;)
Some people don't seem to grasp what this video wants to accomplish. If you already know about different tip sizes, flux gel or flux pens, solder paste and heat guns, you don't need to listen to him, you already know enough and have the right tools for the job. But if you are a beginner, scared of SMD work, not wanting to "short" 2 pins by using too much solder and connecting them, he is showing you easy techniques to fix the mistake you made by using less than ideal tools you had at hand. And people saying he isn't using flux: have you ever heard of rosin core solder? You can clearly see that after a few pins his board is coated in flux (5:30). Flux is also not magic. If you have an old board that's been lying around, by all means use extra flux. But if it is a new board and new components out of the factory, rosin core solder is all you really need, since the connections aren't dirty and oxidized, yet. Is it the neatest job? No. Was he trying to make it neat? Probably not. Is it functional? Yes. Is that all that matters for the end user? Also yes. By all means, give people more information on how to do a better or easier job soldering SMD components. But don't be a douche in the process and talk crap. Have a great day!
Before trying that, I suggest using better quality solder (leaded with flux core - e.g. multicore/loctite). Also Ben doesn't use flux here but that also makes everything a lot easier, with flux applied the solder just goes where you want it to.
@Yves Bodê if you pay attention nothing is optimal in this video but he's still getting it done. That's the point. He's trying to show folks that no matter what they can do this. On another channel I watch the guy solders SMD with a 100 Watt soldering gun just to troll people. It's funny. He gets it done too though.
BGAs are actually pretty easy, you need a hot air station and a good liquid flux... heat the board up a little add some flux get the part close to were it should be a heat it up until the solder melts, the part will center itself... if it’s super fine pitch like 0.4mm then you probably need a machine with optics to place it... it can be done but it isn’t worth it, have a shop with the right tools mount it for you...
WAY too much solder! If you are going to pre-tin the pads for capacitors and such then the least you can do it shake the excess off the iron before introducing more. Talk about “cold solder joints,” all the flux is burned off and the freshly tinned pad gets diluted with old solder when you don’t shake off your top first.
Please use flux. You don't even need to put the initial blob if you have flux. All you need is: 1. put plenty of flux (flux pen or syringe one) on the footprint 2. hold part in right position 3. touch corner pin with soldering iron with solder on the tip 4. If you used enough flux, you can drag the tip across all the pins and they won't bridge
Okay I dont know what stuff you using but my solder wants to stick to EVERYTHING when I put it on the board and it doesnt wanna be removed :( What am I doing wrong ? I upgraded my Soldering Station tried to learn and get better but Im still getting frustrated so fast as the solder dsoesnt really wanna flow and sticks to everything and it gets messy
Must question the choice to make a tutorial in surface mount without having any liquid flux. It just makes it so much neater and easier especially when you carry solder.
I recognize there's a great deal of experimentalism to this project, but really you could have saved yourself a lot of time and money by just buying a better model of addressable RGB LED. (At the time the video was made: APA102 or SK9812, now: HD107s or HD108)
Some Kester rework flux (RF741 no clean ftw) and a bit less heat will get rid of those spikes and make er look pretty. Sure Ben knows this but keeping it simple with his laid back attitude is a better way to show that everyone can and should try. Greetings from Lake Country, Oconomowoc neighbor !
Looking at the revised schematic, how are you clocking consecutive one data bits, as the MOSI line doesn't make a transition to re-trigger the output? I would think you need to pass CLK to the B input of both halves, and then pass the inverted MOSI to A for the "one" pulse generator. Luckily that 4th gate is sitting at the ready :)
Hi, great video. What's that glossy stuff on the surrounding area when you solder? It looks like oil leaking from something as you solder, almost Edit: Ohh, it's flux / rosin / whatever people call it, you call it flux
Ben, I like your personality and projects, but sweet jesus, stop making soldering tutorials. Your soldering technique is still as terrible as in the videos you posted years ago. I don’t understand making tutorials of things one actually sucks at...
Yup get some amtech flux from Louis' s website and you'll never have issues flowing solder to the right places and it looking sexy. These ugly solder and desolder issues he has in every video would be fixed by good flux.
No, actually getting a fine tip is a bad idea. What you do want is thick flat or beveled tip and flux and I mean drown the chip in it. It does wonders to the surface tension of the solder, you can just have bit of solder on the tip and touch multiple pins at the same time and the flux will cause the solder to only be where it should be, no bridges.
Surface mount was meant to be easier to automate, so wouldn't it make sense that it wouldn't be a super precise process? Or are people just afraid of small parts?
The temperatures are the same, also flux is your friend. Leaded is easier to solder than lead-free of course and lead-free generally requires higher temps
60/40 is plumbing solder, you want 63/37 for electronics, it solidifies faster, has almost no plastic point, it goes from liquid to solid within a couple of degrees so the part won’t move while it cools, even better for wire... depending on what exactly your doing and exactly what iron 600-800F, same as through hole with 650F being pretty typical for most things if your iron was less than $500... the really high end irons will probably be set to 580-625... irons lose heat fast so 800 might only get you to an actual 600 if what your soldering sucks up the heat... so temperature depends on the person (style/technique) and the work, it’s more art than science... Some parts are heat sensitive, especially some SMD capacitors and resistors, so the actual temperature isn’t as important as heating it for the shortest amount of time possible... for heat sensitive parts I actually run the iron hotter so I’m heating the joint instantly and not lingering with the iron. I heat the pad and let the solder flow and heat the component, I almost never touch the part with the iron...
_____ Ok bud whatever floats your boat, worked for the largest electronics companies on the planet for past 30+ years, Hayes, BELLCORE/Bell Labs, Siemens AG, LG Electronics and various others, hardly ever seen any 60/40 around... plumbers solder is an industry joke btw, so take a breath a stay calm... but seriously it wasn’t used in the electronics industry for rework or hand soldering much before ROHS killed off heavy metals in consumer goods, 60/40 was most common as large bars used to feed wave solder production lines or solder pots, but for doing anything by hand rolls of 63/37 is what you’ll find used by most professionals... 60/40 is cheaper, so when you’re buying 5,000lb pallets of solder bar stock to feed a production line it can matter, but for a single 1lb roll it it doesn’t...
@@robertw1871 Sorry, but you are wrong. I think you might be taking this harder than you should. I pretty much swear by Kester 60/40 and use it daily as an EE. www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00068IJPO/
_____ good grief the internet is full of experts... Solder from Amazon!?, you know there are companies that supply the electronics industry right, Digikey, Mouser, Granger, Avnet, OEM etc... If you prefer the inferior properties of 60/40 alloy then by all means keep using it...
Nice, I like it. Your bench, your rules, eh? - As long as it gets the job done. Yeah, this looks like me soldering surface mount sometimes! Solder blob, dang.... *Drags iron across pins to distribute solder - Then cleans up the evidence* ... No one will ever know! Muahahaha! Surface mount makes it nice to not have to keep flipping a board over, and over at least. Nice in larger builds. Still... thru-hole components are nice to work with; and super easy to prototype something. Haven't we all whipped together at least a few, no board widgets, just all soldered together with thru-hole compnents? * And yeah! - 😎 Solder (Pronounced: Sädər) // Not Solder (Sōld-ər) 👍Thank you!
One, production would be where you bring in solder masks, solder paste and reflow ovens. This is prototyping. And two, most of the gunk we see in this video is flux buildup not solder. Lots of flux removers out there but I like plain old limonene GooGone with a toothbrush.
This has made me get out my copy of IPC610 and even at a glance the globs of solder on the passives fail class 1 as the excess is touching the component bodies.
@@Diehard4077 the problem I've got is with the title. He's called it a tutorial. After all these years of hacking and modding, I would expect Ben to have better skills than this. Even when he's "touching up" he doesn't add, additional flux. Everyone should start somewhere but should strive to reach NASA quality.
Actually the surface mounted devices are easier to deal with. The only challenge is the smaller pitch compared to most through hole components. Luckily they still manufacture SMD components in big enough sizes that they can still be effortlessly hand soldered. 0603 and smaller passives is getting annoying but as long as you can order 0805 or bigger then all is good.
I like how you named the video Also, good job. Smd are difficult only if they are very tiny or have the pads under the case. Surface Mount Tutorial (SMT)
I never understood one of the key fundamentals of SMD soldering was to make sure you don't block the camera. Now that I know what I have been doing wrong all these years I think I will finally have success.
Not to add noise on a soldering video, but I like to label the pins with human readable text instead of explicitly stating the pin number each time. You've commented what the pins are used for at the top instead of defining a label that means the pin number. Then I explicitly state the name of the pin. 1 and 0 are universally high and low respectively so substituting that doesn't make as much sense, but I could see someone being pedantic about it and doing that too.
I can't wait to see the new generation of smd devices in solar & wind power and of coarse electric cars. Every time chips shrink down in size they get cheaper and use less energy. Imagine holding a power inverter the size of a tablet that can power your entire house and is 40% more efficient then older power inverters from 10 years ago. Good times are ahead
Just a heads up some of us have trouble with your sound settings. Its mostly my fault for setting it like this but i have dts surround routed to multiple devices to let me pipe sound thru speakers a tv and headphones. So when your coming outa central only your mute to me
