[time-nuts] pcb question

John Miles jmiles at pop.net
Fri Jun 6 23:59:43 EDT 2008


That's a good way to do it, but be careful soldering chip capacitors and
resistors.  Reliability can be a problem when SMD parts are installed this
way.  They are not meant to be hand-soldered (even to a proper PC board),
and it's easy to ruin them by tearing off their end plating.  You won't
always notice this when it happens.

I've found it's helpful to add a mm or two of bare 24-gauge wire as an
expansion joint whenever I mount a chip capacitor between the ground plane
and a rigid support like a heavy conductor or pin.

-- john, KE5FX

> -----Original Message-----
> From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com]On
> Behalf Of SAIDJACK at aol.com
> Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 8:41 PM
> To: normn3ykf at stny.rr.com; time-nuts at febo.com
> Subject: [time-nuts] pcb question
>
>
> Hello Norm,
>
> yes, you are right, that's the way I do it. You can see that on the two
> attached pics. You can also see that I sometimes cut small
> islands into the
> Copper with an Exacto knife to solder down through hole parts and
> Tantalum caps
> for example.
>
> For SMD IC's I solder down the GND pins, then use small caps from
> the board
> to the power pins, and wire the VCC with rework wire.
>
> Excuse the poor picture/board quality, these are the only two
> boards I had
> able to be photographed - I usually use thermal glue to seal the
> finished
> boards.
>
> This is a very quick and dirty, and surprisingly good electrical way to
> build something. I've done circuits with over 1GHz like this!
>
> Hope that helps,
> bye,
> Said
>
>
> In a message dated 6/6/2008 15:50:40 Pacific Daylight Time,
> SAIDJACK  writes:
>




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