Useful SMD practice circuit ideas?

Chat about pick and place machines, reflow ovens, assembly techniques and other SMT tips & trix

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
Locked
Agent24
 
Posts: 307
Joined: Sun Jan 24, 2010 6:48 am

Useful SMD practice circuit ideas?

Post by Agent24 »

I want to do some practice on SMD soldering and would prefer to actually make something useful rather than just waste a bunch of parts on a fake board layout.

However everything I come up with is quite complex, expensive, and not really suitable for starting out on (in case I break anything)

Does anyone know of some simple but useful circuits which I could try?

User avatar
westfw
 
Posts: 2008
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:01 pm

Re: Useful SMD practice circuit ideas?

Post by westfw »

A couple of the hobbyist dealers in the US have "SMT practice kits" that do something...
http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/p ... mber=C6719

I did a series of two-transistor blinky circuits some time ago. Various SMT sizes, one and two sides PCBs with components on one or both sides, etc. I don't think they're particularly useful, and they don't have an ICs, and I'd probably use smaller components if I were designing it today (they're 1206 based), but you're welcome to them if you want them...
Attachments
smtblink.png
smtblink.png (6.37 KiB) Viewed 2537 times

Agent24
 
Posts: 307
Joined: Sun Jan 24, 2010 6:48 am

Re: Useful SMD practice circuit ideas?

Post by Agent24 »

Not a bad idea but I wanted to stay away from circuits like this.

I'd rather make something which has a practical purpose and which I can actually use for something in future.

(I already have a flasher circuit just like this one as my first ever soldering project, and it just sits in a drawer :( )

Problem is it can't be too complex, or expensive as I am just learning here. I don't think I would make a total mess of it (I did make an SMD circuit once, it looked like BANNED, mainly as I made the board by hand with a dalo pen, but worked perfectly) - but I don't particularly like the idea of potentially losing $100 on something tricky.

If it did have a complex IC I could always use the through-hole version and have the rest of the parts SMD.

User avatar
westfw
 
Posts: 2008
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:01 pm

Re: Useful SMD practice circuit ideas?

Post by westfw »

Well, you could get BatchPCB or Dorkbot to make you some Ardunio nano (or similar) boards, and build your own mini-arduino... (or the same for duemilanove or Uno, come to think of it.)

Locked
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.

Return to “SMT (Surface Mount Tech)”