Soldering SMD and Hakko FX888-D soldering station review

[zombiess]

After 20+ years of soldering I finally decided it was time to buy a soldering station, something I should have done at least 10 years ago. I stumbled upon the sale of a Hakko FX-888D station at Frys electronics for $65 yesterday while walking the isles. I had no idea how much it normally cost, but it was on sale and I have read good reviews of Hakko products in the past. This iron heats up super fast, has a huge selection of tips and holds the temperature rock steady. There is a huge difference between working with a normal soldering pencil / iron which costs $15-60 and this station. Even at normal price this station is < $100 at amazon.com

For heavy duty work such as soldering 4 AWG wire, building up traces with 8 AWG or heavier copper or any kind of work which requires a hot iron, I strongly recommend American Beauty soldering irons. I have found their 150W pencil iron to be perfect for just about all my hard to work on stuff. I use a $20 harbor freight motor speed control to keep it from over heating.

Since I am finding myself having to do SMD work more often I decided this was a good investment. I managed to get all the SMD components on my 6 FET driver stages last night in just a 3 hours. The hardest part is soldering an SO-14 IC which I had previously tried with my grounded needle tipped 15W Radioshack pencil iron. These turned out to be some of the easiest to install. I managed to get 6 of them soldered in about 15 mins and have virtually perfect solder joints, they are the best looking joints on the entire board.

I watched a few youtube videos on how to do SMD, this one was the most helpful
[youtube]5uiroWBkdFY[/youtube]

I am finding SMD to be so easy that I have decided most of my future designs will be SMD. On the board I have been working on my smallest components are 1206 size because I wanted to make sure I could handle them easily since I'm not good at SMD. I have some 805 sized parts on order for my next design, those will prove a bit more challenging.

 

[Ricky_nz]

Yep the Hakko stuff is good,
Ive got a FX-951 soldering station and because the hand piece is so light its really good for SMD.
I replaced my old Chinese soldering station with it a few years ago and its far better.
Good selection of tips that should be available for years for the hakko stuff.

I too use SMD for most of my projects now as its quicker and easier than leaded to assemble in most cases.
0603 is as small as I would use on a hand assembled device and I have no issues soldering 0.5mm pitch TQFP microcontrollers, just do 2 - 3 pins at a time.

 

[bigmoose]

I am another SMD believer. I stopped at 0805 packages though because of a little shake. The young guys (30's) at work can do the 0603 with no problem. I am another solder station supporter.

I also found a way to do QFD's with no problem with a hot air pencil. I like them too now!!

The QFD footprint:


QFD down.

 

[zombiess]

I too use SMD for most of my projects now as its quicker and easier than leaded to assemble in most cases.
0603 is as small as I would use on a hand assembled device and I have no issues soldering 0.5mm pitch TQFP microcontrollers, just do 2 - 3 pins at a time.

All these years I've been missing out because I was spooked about doing SMD because I thought it was too difficult, I feel so silly now that I've done it so easily. It literally took me about 5 mins to make near perfect solder joints on the SO-14 package. I was terrified of making solder bridges until I watched the video above and used a very similar technique.

0603 is pretty small. I hope I can do the 0805 package OK, the 1206 is a walk in the park.

 

[zombiess]

Bigmoose, that QFD looks tricky. I'm guessing you just tinned the leads and then used the air pencil to reflow everything?

 

[bigmoose]

Two secrets Zomb, you have to buy yourself a good pair of tweezers with a 45 degree bend in them. The way I use them is in my left hand. I rest my palm on the bench and that takes the shake out and then the 45 degree bend is perfect. My 30 year old, eagle eye tech showed me this trick. It is also how you get your alignments perfect. You have that 4 inch lever arm of the tweezer to place the part perfectly orthogonal.

For 0805 parts I very lightly tin one pad then put a drop of keester liquid rosin flux on the pad. I place the part with tweezers and very lightly touch the joint with a clean tip on the soldering iron. It usually melts and places the resistor/cap perfectly. I then solder the other end with 0.010 solder, then come back and resolder the end I tacked.

I found that flux is the key with SMD.

For the QFD I lightly tin the pads so that there is an ever so slight hump to the solder. You must have solder mask on the PCB to aid in alignment. The "secret" here is a special Chipquick "tacky flux" that stays tacky through the melt temperature of the solder. It keeps the part in place up to the 500 ish deg F soak temp. Usual fluxes dry up and the part blows off. Digikey has the stuff in syringes. http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/SMD291/SMD291-ND/355201 Use a liberal amount of tacky flux and a hot air pencil. Play the heat around and when the solder melts, you see the part "jump" and perfectly align. I have inspected my QFD's under microscope, and I am happy with them. I have yet to have a failure soldering one on! ... now I am doomed...

 

[Ricky_nz]

0603 is pretty small. I hope I can do the 0805 package OK, the 1206 is a walk in the park.

Yep, I generally use 0805 unless I need extra power or voltage ratings of 1206.
I mainly use 0603 when I run out of space in a small area of a board etc. 0805 is pretty easy if you have got a steady hand.

 

[Ykick]

Great thread guys, very helpful as I'm beginning to go down this road too.