Ron, I have done this before, regarding the hot air reflow method. I will not lie...it's difficult and requires very strict concentration. I would lay a small bead of paste out of a dispenser along the lead array on all sides and carefully lay the part on pads, sometimes tacking one lead on each corner with conventional iron and then using the hot air to flow the rest of the leads. This will cause bridging, but that can taken care of after the fact. The most critical part of this was to use very fluid movements and reflow all of the leads at the same time and evenly, going around all of the leads in a circular motion. If this is not done right, pads can be damaged easily. Try a scrap board and dummy part first, if possible. Jason Gregory Production Supervisor LaBarge Inc. (918)459-2367 [log in to unmask] Ron Olinyk <[log in to unmask]> on 11/27/2002 03:48:30 PM Please respond to "TechNet E-Mail Forum." <[log in to unmask]>; Please respond to Ron Olinyk <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] cc: (bcc: Jason Gregory/LABARGE) Subject: [TN] Hand soldering fine pitch SMT Can anyone recommend good soldering technique for hand assembly of 20mil pitch devices and 0603, 0402 SMT chips? We are looking at doing some protoype assembly on some fairly dense (and small) pcbs. We were thinking of using solderpaste and one of those portable solder pens with a hot air tip ie. Weller Portasol. Has anyone had success using this technique? Thanks Ron. --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 -----------------------------------------------------