This is 2016, and almost every hacker dabbles with SMD parts now, unlike back in the day. This means investing in at least some specialized tools and equipment to make the job easier. One handy tool ...

You have some fine pitch soldering to do, but all you have on hand is a big soldering iron. What do you do? There are a few possible answers, but [Mr SolderFix] likes to pull a strand from a large ...

Surface Mount Resistors (SMDs) are usually made as very small, rectangular-shaped metal oxide film resistors. A thick layer of metal oxide resistance is deposited as it contains a ceramic substrate ...

How and why sub-milliohm chips warrant consideration as a separate class of component. Strategies for smart component selection, layout design, inspection and soldering process control. While ...

Many factors affect the long-term reliability of ceramic-substrate-based chip resistors. Among those are changes in resistance due to soldering, temperature changes, or even the expected shifts in ...

The result is that the entire board is much denser, and comments can be installed on both sides of the PC board, as seen in Figure 2 . Since the board does not require drilling for component leads ...

Surface-mounted resistors are resistors that contain numerical figures in codes similar to the ones used on axial lead-type resistors. These resistors use SMT technology to decrease the proportions of ...

How to set up fixturing according to manufacturer guidelines, establishing a capable test system. How to ensure close control of assembly processes like solder-paste ...

Back in the late ’90s and early 2000s, I played guitar in a couple of screamo bands (apparently, that genre’s called Skramz now). We played high-energy shows all over New England—sometimes a few times ...

During Computex, I was offered a chance to go see how a motherboard is actually produced. GIGABYTE invited me and other media on a trip to see one of their three factories. We were bused off to the ...