How hard is the smd soldering (DIY kit)?

Hi all,

I'm at the final stages of ordering my parts and my last big decision is pre-assembled or diy RAMPS kit.

I can do through hole soldering without any trouble and I've had a little experience with surface soldering although its been purely wire to pcb, never with any of those tiny resistors.

I've got a small tipped soldering iron, solder and I've order a flux pen, some fine solder braid and some soldering tweezers (been meaning to buy them for a while now).

On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being easy as pie, 10 being hell no don't even try) how hard is the smd soldering on the RAMPS board?

Many thanks,

Joe

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2011 05:53AM by JoeDaStudd.

Hi Just soldered a Ramps v1.4 last night. It was also my first attempt in solering smd components and I was surprised how flewless everything worked! So let's say it's a 3-4 on the scale. The most tricky part was getting the components out of their package without losing them . But with good tweezers this shouldn't be a big deal.
In any case I would advise you to use some sort of flux and pre tin the pads. Through the flux the tiny resistors got even sucked in the correct allignment while soldering.
Don't be afraid just try it! Good luck!

I wanted to solder the SMB myself as well after seeing the video. I was however advised on the IRC channel not to do it since it's apparently pretty tricky and I don't have the experience. So I've paid the extra dues at xyzprinter.com to have it soldered and I have to say now I'm happy with that choice. It has delayed the order with about a week though.

mmm 1 for, 1 against.
To make things worse I save about €30 buy DIY'ing it, but at the same time if it goes wrong its going to cost me €30 more to buy a pre-assembled board.

Hand soldering SMD parts can get pretty frustrating on your first try, and its not like you can back out of it at this point :-)

Just double check and triple check, specially those polarized parts(caps, LEDs, Diodes)

I would say 6-7 for the first few parts, then can go down to 3-4 for the rest.

I never used QFNs in the my designs just because I'm scared the heck of soldering them by hand but after my first try I felt it wasnt that bad, so now Use them as often as other packages.

Go start soldering!

Here's a helpful video on SMD soldering
[www.eevblog.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2011 01:00AM by royco.

That's a really useful video tutorial Royco

I watched all three and realised I'd been 'doing it wrong' my whole life.

oh well, here's to getting better!

Just a little update.
My kit arrived yesterday, so I started the smd soldering process.

The chips are even smaller then I expected, but after the first few I did get the hang of it.
It went 10 when I opened the kit (so so small), 7-8 for C2, 5 for LED1 back up to 7 for the other LED's (seemed to be a lot thinner then the green LED for some reason) then 3-4 for the rest. Well I stopped at R25 after nearly losing one .

Thanks for all the encouragement guys.

---

My Reprap blog

jds-reprap.blogspot.com

Hey joe ever finish the ramps and did it work ?
I just got my kit today and god there soooooo small. Really why would they make this board with these
Well wish me luck going to start it this wed
George