SMD soldering – At first, I tinned all the circuit board pads for the SMD chips before trying to mount them. That was a mistake. With both pads for chip tinned, heating up one end of the chip caused ...

Soldering to a PC board can be tricky: Too much heat can make the copper trace lift right off the board substrate. Use a soldering pencil rated at 15-25 watts, no more. (Watch the video; story ...

The basic metallurgy of solder. How to make a solder joint. How to repair a circuit board. The vintageTEK museum is a geek’s paradise to tour if visiting the Portland, Oregon area. The museum has ...

The Ball Grid Array, or BGA package is no longer the exclusive preserve of large, complex chips on computer motherboards: today even simple microcontrollers are available with those little solder ...