[Weather] [personal] Weather PCB dimensions

[Steve Hendrix]

At 2006-11-19 14:20, you wrote:
>Regarding through-hole boards, I was thinking that we ought to consider
>using through-hole(but not plated through-hole) construction for the
>passives at least. I've built, for instance, the Simon Hub kit and the Bray
>Barometer from the 1-Wire project of a few years ago and more recently, the
>Hobby Boards Humidity module. I find those amoeba sized chip caps and
>resistors to be an unnecessary pain to place and solder when simple axial
>leads would have been much easier.

It's a little extra work, but not particularly difficult to lay out a 
board such that it can be stuffed with either throughhole or SMT. 
I've done a number of such boards. But as others have pointed out, 
SMT soldering need not be rocket science. There's a huge difference 
in hand assembly depending on whether you're talking 1206 parts or 
0201 parts. I personally use almost exclusively 0603, sometimes 0402 
for tight RF designs. If the design requirements permit, I'll lay out 
the board with 0805 footprints, then use 0603 parts - both because I 
maintain a large stock of 0603s, and because the extra pad area 
provides a little bit better bite for hand-soldering.

Steve Hendrix