hand-soldering teeny tiny chips!

Step 4 Connect top to bottom

Now comes the fun part. One by one, you need to heat the balls of solder that you've created, so that they become connected to the chip *and* the board. You can do this by touching the pads/pins from the side with the soldering iron tip, and sometimes wiggling it up and down to encourage a connection to form. A nice trick for the first pin that you solder (can be any pin, it doesn't really matter which) is to hold the chip firmly in place with a pair of tweezers (pin it down to the board), and touch the hot iron to the pin/pad in one corner until the solder bridges the gap. With any pin, you may need to wiggle it up and down, or add a little more solder (see the picture) to get it connected. But don't add too much, or you risk bridging pins underneath that shouldn't be bridged. With even just one connected pin, the chip will be stable enough that you can do the rest without having to keep it pinned down. You can work your way around the chip, connecting each pin to the board until you've got them all. See the next step for how to make sure you've connected everything successfully.

Comments

[bikeNomad]

Instead of tweezers (which take a third hand if you're holding solder and an iron), you can do what I did and make a jig for SMD soldering out of a piece of wood and a piece of wire.

[davidmerrill]

very nice!