Introduction: SMD Soldering With Regular Soldering Iron

By Taste The Code
About: Part software developer, part maker.

I'm working on a stairs lighting project and for it, I designed and ordered a PCB to be manufactured by PCBWay.

As you might already know, PCBWay is a PCB manufacturing company in China, from where you can order PCBs for your projects. They've already sponsored a few of my videos but this is the first board that they manufactured for me. PCBWay also offers sponsorships for students and hobbyists where you can get your projects built for free.

In this Instructable, I'll guide you through the steps that I took in order to be able to solder the WS2812B SMD LEDs to the board along with the 100nF 1206 SMD capacitors.

Supplies

Check out the video where I use KiCad to design these boards:


JCD 8898 Soldering station Review Video:


https://www.banggood.com/custlink/vmKdjiYfv7

To download the Gerber files for the PCB, visit the project page at PCBWay:

https://www.pcbway.com/project/shareproject/WS2812...

Components needed to assemle the board:

Step 1: Secure Your Boards

Since the individual modules are really small at 3x3cm, when I ordered the boards, I instructed PCBWay to panelise them on panels with 9 boards each.

By being on a panel, you can secure and work on 9 boards at a time instead of one by one. This is extremely beneficial if you have a hot plate to reflow the PCB using some solder paste, but since I don't have a hot plate, I used a regular soldering iron.

I've placed the entire panel into my helping hand and I positioned on a slight downward angle towards me so I can better reach the back of the LEDs.

Step 2: Secure Single Pin on a Component

To secure a component on the board, I first added a small amount of solder to a single pin and used my tweezers to position the component over that pad.

When I was happy with the positioning of the component, I used the soldering iron to re-melt that solder on the pad, and the solder also flowed on the component.

When that pad is solid again, the component is now held in place so you can continue soldering the rest of the pads.

Step 3: Solder the Rest of the Pads

With the components in place and held on the board with that first joint, you can now continue and add solder to the rest of the pads as well.

There is no need for a particular order here, but one thing that you should be careful of is to not burn any of the other components with the soldering iron.

It happened to me that I accidentally touched some of the LEDs with the body of the soldering iron but luckily, I did no harm to the LEDs.

Step 4: Test You Board

To be sure that you did a good job with the soldering, and that you have not missed any pads on the board it is crucial that you test them out.

In my case, I used an Arduino Nano with the strand test sketch from Adafruit to connect the board and make sure that it works as expected.

Testing each board is time-consuming but for a small batch of boards like this, this is easier than creating a dedicated testing rig.

Step 5: Rinse and Repeat

Now that you have the first board, you can continue to solder the rest and start paying more attention to the process so you can improve it.

The best things to look for are weird placements and weird hand angles so you can maybe re-position the panel or the helping hand to a better position for easier reach.

I hope that you liked this Instructable and that it was helpful to you. I have a ton of other Instructables as well as videos on my YouTube channel so feel free to check them out and subscribe.

Cheers!