Me again, this time it's a NPN Si Fuzz Face in SMD.
This is my first SMD build. During my time lurking around i saw pickdropper's work and was amazed. I told myself "you could start doing something like that instead of your usual vero mess".so i started reading alot about SMD soldering, watching videos, and finally got the guts to try it. I made a couple of layouts (also my first) for FF and SHO, bought a 0805 SMD cap & res kit with many values i'll probably never use and made a layout for practicing. It's a 1"x1" double sided board with 35 0805 components on each side. Perfect for all those useless values. After populating two of those i felt ready enough to solder the FF.
SMD doesn't seem too hard, i use a regular conical tip solder iron, the cheap stuff, without much problem. I'll probably upgrade soon, but first i have to find a job
Also no magnification, not even my glasses (the dog ate them). But flux is a must, i use Kester 186 that pickdropper recommended.
When the boards and components arrived, i ran into my first problem. As you can see in top left corner of the PCB there should be a polarized cap, but! As i ordered tantalum caps from futurlec and they dont have size listed anywhere, i sent 'em an email and they failed to mention that 100uf caps come in 7-something size, so the pads weren't big enough for those. Then i told myself "OK, you have 4 22uf caps which fit there, better some filtering than none", and soldered it. I foolishly presumed that the line mark on the cap represents the negative pole. It doesn't, so i ruined a couple of caps and was left with a 10uf MLCC for PS filtering.
Also i ordered 1k trims instead of 10k so i had to source locally (the black one).
Other than that it was smooth sailing. Boxing was done following steps pickdropper described in mayan thread.
Enclosure is etched, but not painted, i just didn't remove all the gunk left from etching and i really liked how it looks.
Here are the pics
This is my first SMD build. During my time lurking around i saw pickdropper's work and was amazed. I told myself "you could start doing something like that instead of your usual vero mess".so i started reading alot about SMD soldering, watching videos, and finally got the guts to try it. I made a couple of layouts (also my first) for FF and SHO, bought a 0805 SMD cap & res kit with many values i'll probably never use and made a layout for practicing. It's a 1"x1" double sided board with 35 0805 components on each side. Perfect for all those useless values. After populating two of those i felt ready enough to solder the FF.
SMD doesn't seem too hard, i use a regular conical tip solder iron, the cheap stuff, without much problem. I'll probably upgrade soon, but first i have to find a job
Also no magnification, not even my glasses (the dog ate them). But flux is a must, i use Kester 186 that pickdropper recommended.When the boards and components arrived, i ran into my first problem. As you can see in top left corner of the PCB there should be a polarized cap, but! As i ordered tantalum caps from futurlec and they dont have size listed anywhere, i sent 'em an email and they failed to mention that 100uf caps come in 7-something size, so the pads weren't big enough for those. Then i told myself "OK, you have 4 22uf caps which fit there, better some filtering than none", and soldered it. I foolishly presumed that the line mark on the cap represents the negative pole. It doesn't, so i ruined a couple of caps and was left with a 10uf MLCC for PS filtering.
Also i ordered 1k trims instead of 10k so i had to source locally (the black one).
Other than that it was smooth sailing. Boxing was done following steps pickdropper described in mayan thread.
Enclosure is etched, but not painted, i just didn't remove all the gunk left from etching and i really liked how it looks.
Here are the pics
