I'm 57. The designer I do the soldering jobs for is in his early 80s. He can't do SMDs so I do all of that for him. He can still do THT components just fine but his designs have gotten more advanced and he just can't fit everything on the boards using THT.

I’m 35 and already feeling that :S

We have to adopt, I started working on old tube radios. Soldering spots 10 times the iron tip 😁

I took a quick look and there are some DIY guitar pedal kits for around $35 on Amazon. They're probably not the best quality but they're definitely a way to get your feet wet.

The small parts are a challenge but the key part if getting them positioned properly and tacked down. Once you've got a couple of opposite pins you can work on the others easily. For the tiniest of pieces like the tiny resistors the surface tension of the solder will stand them right up on end and pull them around which is very frustrating. I get those in place, hit them with liquid flux, then hold them down and touch one end. After that the other end is easy.

What's important here is that I'm using a standard soldering iron like anyone would use. It's a good one but it's just a soldering iron.

The smallest I have worked with are 0402s and I find them incredibly annoying. The smallest I go now is 0805. If I need smaller I'll just have the boards assembled by the fab house in China. I mostly use All PCB but my friends have tried PCB Way and another that I can't remember. They say that the boards are all basically the same.

Oh man, I remember doing that. We had rub on transfer traces and pads that we could apply to the board before etching that did a good job. I used to buy those at Radio Shack.

My friends, the ones I take in the microscopic soldering jobs for, have a small CNC mill that they can use to mill boards. That's very cool.

Things get silly at really small sizes.

Soldering is attainable for most people even with basic equipment. Most of us started with a basic consumer pencil iron. I still have the Weller WESD-51 that I used for more than 20 years sitting on my desk. My hope is that this group will provide support for beginners and allow more experienced hobbyists and professionals to talk about more advanced topics and techniques.

Maybe we need some short soldering 101 type videos?

Those things were awesome. My wife found one of Facebook Marketplace and sent me a link to the ad. I was like, "What they heck am I going to use that for?!?" She just laughed.

Welcome. It's more of a challenge than soldering THT, that's for sure, but it can be done even with basic equipment. I'm going to Walmart tomorrow to buy a $10 soldering iron and I'm going to remake the SMD soldering videos on my YouTube channel using that $10 iron to show that it can be done. No one should be afraid of soldering SMDs.

Yup. The thing that's important to remember is that everything in my photos can be hand soldered with a bit of knowledge. I have always used a fairly basic soldering iron or station. My videos are intended to show that it is possible with basic equipment.

Adventures in soldering. Are you prototyping or are these production systems. I have one that I built a while ago that I'm not proud of but it works.

Hehehe. When I was looking for that one I found this monstrocity.

I had run out of adapter boards for the SOIC chip. I have a new stock of them now.