Modding today's hardware often means moving or removing tiny surface mount components, and using a standard soldering iron feels about as effective as using a hammer to kill a fly. If buying an ...

A circuit board packaging technique in which the leads (pins) on the chips and components are soldered on top of the board. Boards can be made faster because surface mount technology (SMT) eliminates ...

For most of us, soldering electronics means soldering on “through hole components,” that are large and easy to handle. However, when machines build components, they use “surface mount components,” ...

If you are lucky enough to encounter a piece of homebrew electronics from the 1950s, the chances are that under the covers the components will be assembled on solder tags, each component with long ...

Should folks building small numbers of circuit boards use surface-mount parts, or should they stick with through-hole components that are so much easier to handle and solder (not to mention see)?

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 ...

As computers have gotten smaller and less expensive over the years, so have their components. While many of us got our start in the age of through-hole PCBs, this size reduction has led to more and ...