Behringer is trash

[vibratoking]

The grain of rice is actually pretty big these days. That's in the 1206 and 0805 range. Try dealing with 0603 or 0402. We're talking grain of sand. You don't need to go below 0805 in most cases, unless you are really shooting for super miniature.

Any decent soldering station with the right tips will do for SMD. You don't need rework stations unless you are dealing with multi pin devices that you must remove and replace. For instance, it's hard to unsolder a 64 pin device with a single point heat source. Weller sells hot air guns that will work for this scenario if you are careful and fast. Many rework stations just use heated air.

I find that my hand settles right down, when I concentrate on the work. You also may find it very useful to have a table mounted magnifier/light source with the spring loaded arm in order to really see what you are doing.

[Aurora]

THe SMD workstation we have at work, is setup with the Weller twin WMD130 twin iron with micro tips,a Metcal induction station and a Pace station covering desoldering tweezers and vacuum / hotair tips.
It also has light magnifiers and a 6x work microscope. A desk top reflow oven is also included, but normally only used for larger multipin chips.
OTOH - when you set out to use the oven, we naturally include as much parts as possible.
My most important personal tool these days, is an Optivisor....... for those " coming of age.." ....

AS to the part size, -I got an 3-ch experimental accelerometer designed by some students, who had used 0402 resitors! A real PITA, - but it is possible.....

[paulster]

The most important tool is the humble flux pen! What a great invention.

[Aurora]

The most important tool is the humble flux pen! What a great invention.

Right! I just plain forgot that little, inexpensive gadget! Invaluable!!!
A couple of years ago, I also bought a quart of liquid flux and some small pump spray bottles. Works great, too.

[Andy Le Blanc]

The technology has outpaced the ability of the average person to deal with.
It's now a specialization, for the average smoe its like trying to make gold from lead.

The wonderful thing about tube electronics is that it is accessible to those
who want to home manufacture with very limited resources.

You did say the bench "at work", can you afford the same at home?
Its not the technology, its how its used, I can fix a telephone but not a cell phone.
I can troubleshoot a tube amp, replace components without specialized tools for very little.

But no one can afford to pay for a technical specialty when the real value of the
product, that uses a technology that necessitates the specialization,
is so low that it makes it more practical simply to replace it.

The value of the products that use SMD is so low that they only make
sense to the marketer, the only value it has is as a one time purchase.
Then it's garbage. So cheap, that the rest of the economies like those
that surround music and musical instruments, repair and restoration, collapse.
I was not exaggerating the component costs, and I'll be damned
if I'm gonna try circuit repair and component replacement under a dissection scope,
when no one can afford or is willing to pay for it in the first place.

[Aurora]

Andy - your comments are more or less my conclusions - and no, - cannot afford a 20 k $ setup at home - with modern instruments topping that! I have a very good, but not that fancy setup at home...

I've been fiddling around with HiFi and electronics for roughly 40 years now. I've also held a extra class ham license since the early 70's.
In my younger days I repaired TVs - for myself and friends. This is no longer possible, - and even if I know what's at fault, I cannot buy the parts anymore, as they are only sold to the large commercial repair shops. Same with PCs - I bought my first PC in the very early 80s, built with mostly standard catalogue logic chips. IBM even published the schematics in their tech manual for the AT, so regular repairs were very possible. I still "fix" PCs, but the same holds for faultgs and parts - no way to get them. Radio transmitters and radio stuff - same old story!

When I started out as a greenhorn EE in the mid 70s, we still repaired our stuff ( I actually still work for the same company). This has all changed to an extent that we almost don't repair anything - anymore. In some cases we demand equipment that just cannot be bought, so our choice is to design and build it ourselves, or hire another company to do it. Our choice has sofar been to do it ourselves, as we then also have the knowledge to quick (?) repairs, since the folks who built are hopefully still in house.

I joined here to relearn and find some of the mysteries about guitar tube amps, as my son is the guitar man ( I mostly play woodwinds). I actually had proper training in tube tech - maybe one of last ones....
I generally stick to conventional components for my personal stuff. I've long been planning a set of tube HiFi amps for myself, but not gotten there yet. My three younger brothers all ride tube amps, and they keep bugging me, but then they buy their stuff - I build mine! Half the fun!

I can see your frustration, and I actually share it, being used to be the " all things fix-it guy", but I've just hd to get beyond that. Just can't change the world, mate...... or can we ????

[nickt]

Think about this. How many cameras do you have? How many mobile phones? Marketers can't get away with forcing you to buy a new car every time a sealed gas tank runs out but if they could they would!!

The whole consumer gadgets thing is crazy over consumption. Throw everyone out of work, ship their jobs to China then trick them into over spending with marketing BS using money borrowed from China (cheap debt/credit cards/redraw loans)!! Get them to buy the same thing over and over and over again - like I said how many mobile phones? how many draws full of cameras? how many PC's in the last 5 years?

China supplies 95% of the world's 'rare earth' metals (the stuff that makes all the electronics possible) demand is about to outstrip supply.

Big-assed capitalists have sold the entire economy over to big-assed communists. It would be a joke if it wasn't really happening...

My 2c ... nothing to see here ... move along ... old man ranting

[Andy Le Blanc]

It's getting to point were we have to advocate for responsible technologies.

blind consumerism will take us over the edge. I'd rather see a hundred of small
makers that come and go, rather than a small handful of umbrella corporations'

free trade isn't free or a good trade, it seems to destroy any natural economic diversity.

[Aurora]

Well - as I said earlier... this is just our beloved free market economy at work ... < DUCKING >

[vibratoking]

This is starting to sound like a conspiracy theory on the part of manufacturers that use SMD technology. How many mobile phones do you own? Only as many as you want to buy - or drop, read below. I still don't have a mobile phone and not because it has SMD technology. I just don't want to be that accessible...thank you.

Seriously, if industries were still using guitar amp technology, then mobile phones and most other devices wouldn't exist. I hear alot of complaining about SMD not being reliable, but that's not true. Why do mobile phones exist? Because they can be made small due to SMD. Why do most mobiles break? Mostly because they are so small you can easily drop them. Throw your guitar amp down on the ground over and over and tell me if it still works. Or drop it in the toilet next time you are relieving yourself . Maybe we should buy road cases for our mobile phones? Sounds like some of you are attributing failure to SMD technology. SMD requires a different repair approach, but it is every bit as reliable or more reliable than any other component technology.

[Ears]

I think that there has been a bit of understandandable simplification going on in arguments here.
Most talk here of the disposable aspect of the technology has been in terms of the economics of repair vs manufacture.
Performance is almost a non issue, if SMD didn't perform it wouldn't exist.
To me we should discourage the disposable technologies, from unneccessary packaging through to planned redundancy, on ecological grounds. It is simply criminal waste and an ecological time bomb.

[Aurora]

While we're at the environmental aspect of things, which I'm also getting some serious concerns about.....
Recycling is getting really big over here... everything from old newspapers to all sorts of electric and electronic stuff. I live on an island with a population of about 7000 people, and we have two recycling stations where we are supposed to deliver everything but normal household garbage. Our local station, serving about 2/3s of this community, is 5-600 yards from my house, and I was over just before X-mas to drop off some stuff I cleaned out of my garage. I counted 11 quite new normal TVs, several last generation wide screens, - no scratches, no dents. I'm very sure most if not all were in full working order......... all dumped for the latest flat screens....... talk about waste!
- Oh - forgot to say that the electronic bins are shipped out 1-2 times a month!

[Andy Le Blanc]

When I was a kid, my mum picked a TV from the dump.

It was a while back and it was not yet illegal to do.

It was all tube, and had one bad tube which she tested and replaced at the
local drug store for a about $3, late sixties hippy thing to do, but better than
a few hundred on a big color console, the $3 was still a lot. Do that with SMD.

Its amazing that at a certain point we are forced to discard by law.

I'd really rant from here but it would get off point fast.

[Ears]

You probably won't wander too far off topic, after all "trash" is part of the thread title.

[CaseyJones]

I'm growin' me a big square beard.

Buyin' me a mule.

Gonna eat that gosh durn mule...