|
Homebrew Equipment A place to show, design and discuss the weird and wonderful electronic creations from the hands of individual members. |
|
Thread Tools |
20th Jan 2016, 11:32 am | #1 |
Nonode
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Virginia Water, Surrey, UK.
Posts: 2,872
|
Surface Mount Adapters for Experimenters
If like me you grew up on active devices that glowed, moved on to "three-legged fuses" and ended up with dual-in line devices, the current crop of very cheap surface mount devices (SMD) can be hard to experiment with.
I've got a small project to do and the chips I need are only available in the SOIC package with 0.05" pitch pins. These are hand-solderable but don't neatly fit onto Veroboard! You can find (expensive) single-device adapters on auction sites but they just turn the SMD into a through-hole DIL version. I wanted some sort of board with lots of SMD pads and a breakout area for through-hole components. I have just discovered this chap, selling very useful prototyping boards and surface-mount adapters from the US with very reasonable postage costs. I have ordered a few boards and will report back on how I get on. https://www.tindie.com/products/DrAz...ll_prod_search Incidentally, Tindie is a new find for me. A place full of all the little bits the new-generation "maker" community needs to tinker with RaspberryPi etc. Lots of interesting stuff. regards Jeremy
__________________
Jeremy, G8MLK, BVWTVM Friend, VMARS, BVWS Secretary. www.pamphonic.co.uk www.bttt.org.uk |
20th Jan 2016, 2:19 pm | #2 |
Guest
Posts: n/a
|
Re: Surface Mount Adapters for Experimenters
For SMD work I design the PCB using a PCB CAD tool, print out on laser film and photo expose/develop/etch. It is a big step but all stuff is available quite cheaply. I have no problem with 0.5mm pitch components using proper leaded solder and a flux pen.
Handy hints... A good pair of tweezers and a selection of powerful reading glasses (a quid or so from ebay) these can be used in series for extra magnification. Some plus points are, smaller boards (cheaper), smaller components (cheaper) and no (well a minimum of) holes to drill. |