Hot Glue vs Soldering

MrTroy · Post by **MrTroy** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 11:51 am

I did a quick search of the archive and haven't seen anything about this yet. I have a chip (AD725) which is fricken tiny and I have big hands which makes soldering this thing a clumsy mess. This chip wasn't exactly cheap (Considering Digikey's $25 minimum as well) so I wanna make sure before I try this, I'm not making a huge mistake. I was thinking of printing my own board and running the traces off to something I can actually use. And instead of soldering the chip to the board. I just want to carefully place the chip on the lines and hot glue it down.

In theory if I place it down perfectly with the leads touching the lines everything should work. Can anyone think of any downside to trying this?

Post by **bicostp** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 12:01 pm

Hot glue works great for prous surfaces or for warpping around stuff, but it's not all that great for maintaining an electrical connection.

You could try using one of those hot air irons to solder it. (You can make one from the Rat Shack desoldering iron and an aquarium pump.) Or have you ever heard of the "baking" trick?

With a clean, small tip you can solder surface mount stuff. Just use the least amount of solder you can. (I have some really thin .020 stuff that works great)

MrTroy · Post by **MrTroy** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 12:07 pm

Nope haven't heard of the baking trick. I'll look that up.

Crap I was hoping this'd be easy. Then again tis life.

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 3:56 pm

Buy a second soldering tip, and sand your old one down for precision. Then switch as needed. Tin the contacts, get the solder off your iron, and put it on that way.

SS