December 2010
Aged cared for my mother became a high priority shortly after I started this page.
I would like to continue this tutorial some time but don't hold your breath while waiting.
A tutorial for soldering the SMD tiny 85.
Please read surface mount soldering first.
I've made a 7 minute video tutorial. It is 104meg in size and can be downloaded here.
It plays fine in VLC.
Or use Youtube.
Making this clip took a lot longer than I'd hoped. It is a bit more difficult soldering with a camera and microphone crowding the stage. I have enough outtakes to do a bloopers page. Finding and learning a new video editor took another day.
It wasn't possible to explain everything in the time available. Choosing the right words while juggling tiny parts is not as easy as you might think.
Overview,
For the one off and small runs of PCBs I do hand soldering is my preferred method. Other people have other preferences and I'm not trying to convert anyone. To be honest my soldering is not perfect every time and I do have to inspect and repair defects. In the above clip I wanted to show it is possible to do SMD work with very common economical equipment - this is far from ideal though. Other tips (of the metal type) and techniques are shown below and on other pages.
The 2 pad devices I use are 0603. This is the imperial name which is what my supplier (element-14) uses. The metric name is 1608 - confusing??
The size is aprox 0.06" × 0.03" or 1.6 mm × 0.8mm. I learned to solder SMD with 1206 parts - twice as long etc - it is a little easier.
Making t85tut.mpeg
The source material for t85tut.mpeg was shot using a USB microscope. I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be 1.3MP but the maximum resolution I've been able to select is 640*480 or 0.3MP. There are a lot of these on the market which look identical($70). The scope has LEDs for lighting but I'm using an LED desk-lamp as well. The scope does not have a microphone so I've added a USB mic. I used blueiris to do the capturing. I figured the motion capture would be handy but ended up with so many false triggers I may as well have triggered manually. Editing was done in linux-ubuntu-openshot. There was an eight second lag in one of the audio tracks which I managed to re-sync.
The tiny85 flashing LED binary can be downloaded here.
External links.
http://www.ibselectronics.com/pdf/pa/walsin/smt_notes.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-mount_technology