My first surface mount solder connections

I'm going to say that I've actually accomplished soldering a surface mount chip to a circuit board.

Dat2zip gave me a plain board to practice with and I soldered a Maxim MicroMax surface mount chip to it. I just soldered one side and then bent it up to inspect. The joints look good under a magnifying glass. Here's how I did it:

1. Rig up a magnifying glass.
2. Clip chip to board with paper clip.
3. Wipe on a little flux.
4. Use big dirty soldering iron to slop on a big drop of solder and make a sticky mess.
5. Clean off soldering iron and use solder wick to absorb excess solder.
6. Clean off extra flux with poking tools.

I couldn't believe it. All the joints were clean and there was no bridging. I bent up the chip since it was only soldered on one side and all the joints held tight with light passing through in between each leg.

Time to get a couple SurfBoards for more practice, but it can be done with simple tools.

What is a SurfBoard?
TIA

A SurfBoard is a factory made circuit board that holds one chip. It has SIP (that's single inline pitch) pins on it that are .1 inches apart. It's an adapter board so that a small surface mount chip can be plugged into a breadboard for prototype testing. I'm going to try soldering wires and regular components to the pins.
www.digikey.com sells them.

Digi-Key Part No. 33108CA-ND for micromax footprint for Maxim 1674/75 DC/DC stepup chip
Price $2.80
Catalog page 699

Here's my whole parts list:

http://edusite10.tripod.com/led3/smount/smount.htm

Hi again Jeff,

Sounds pretty cool, and you are getting
good results.

I got good results with the 0.05 pitch
parts, but the smaller 0.0256 i had some
problems with. I hope to be trying
some more soon too.

Havent tried the 0.02 pitch yet either.

--Al

Glad to hear people are having good results with ordinary tools. I'm gonna be going through this ordeal myself once my first prototype boards and an order of solder paste finally go through. Ordered some no-clean flux too on the off-chance that the paste decides to spatter on heat-up (which apparently happens if heated too quickly from too low a temperature?)

-XCN-

I also got a tube of Radio Shack solder paste. It's silver and tin I think. And I want to try using a bobby pin to hold the chip to the circuit board.