SMD soldering

So I'm designing a project, and a couple components are available only in surface-mount versions--namely, a SOIC-28 chip and a compact-flash header. I've never worked with surface-mount before--is there any way I can solder these components? I bought a DIP "socket" for the SOIC-28 from Mouser, thinking that it would somehow "lock" the SOIC-28 into place, but it really only has pads for soldering. So no matter what I do, this thing has to get soldered. The CF header gives me a headache just looking at it--the pins are packed about twice as tightly as the SOIC-28. Any ideas? Thanks guys,

What are you doing with CompactFlash? Sounds interesting :grin:

Get some very thin solder and tin a pad at the end of the CF socket. Then place the socket on the footprint, and solder the leg to the tinned pad.

No try soldering a pin at the other end of the socket. Now the socket should be at the right position - if not fix it. Now just solder all the pins using enough heat and solder. Don't worry if you get some bridges between the pins. Now everything probably looks messy...

Get some solder wick and remove the excess solder. Now you should be done. But inspect the solder joints with a magnifying glass.

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen

Thanks for your help. I'm designing an MP3 player using a 512MB Compact Flash card for memory. It's all based around the PIC16F877 and this decoder chip.

get some good liquid rosin flux and a box of q-tips... tack the chip down at the corners like mcs suggested, flux liberally then just use highish heat and *quickly* flow some solder along the pads. The flux will make the solder really really not want to bridge, but you still may need to go back with braid and suck up any bridging, check it over really thoroughly with a magnifying glass...

btw, dipping the braid in the flux makes it work really super well also. Basically, liquid flux is a DIY'er's best friend

you can clean up the sticky mess it leaves behind with alcohol.

As an avid SMD solderer there is no "easy" way to do it without a degree of experience in soldering multilegged parts. Tmbg suggested the way that I usually solder these parts, but i also have a Metcal soldering iron with various tips designed to (un)solder whole parts at once which allows me to do a part in a few seconds. don't allow the board/part to get too hot, as RAM of any kind really HATES heat, so do the tiny traces to the pads, they will come loose from the PCB and really make life suck!

good luck, and do a lot of practice before you actually do it, and above all, take your time, but not too much time!

:guinness: for a steady hand.