For those guys out there making SMT boards by hand, how fast are you placing components?
My average is around 15 seconds per part which seems awfully slow. Actually it’s 30 seconds including syringe paste dispense on a board that’s mostly discrete components, but I’m assuming a 50/50 split.
How fast are you averaging? What’s considered a normal production speed for hand placement without assistive (manual P&P) tools?
lol, I never timed myself, but it would depend on the size of the board. I usually place all the SMT parts and then use a hot air station to finish it. So within a few minutes…
I haven’t tried the syringe / hot air technique yet. I can hand-solder down to 0805 reliably (only about 50% success at 0603). SOICs I just tack down one pin for placement then solder away. I can do an SOIC-8 in a minute or so I guess. I’ve done a couple of TSSOPs but DFNs are beyond me right now.
Someone on another site says that a 15 second per part rate isn’t bad. The nice thing about paste and reflow is that everything solders at once, so the time-limiting factor becomes how fast you can place the parts.
I don’t even bother with paste + oven (or hot air) any more. I’m much faster just soldering with wire solder and I never have to worry about bumping the board or touching parts and having parts slide off the pads… and I never have to futz around with solder paste. With a bit of practice I’d bet you could be faster with an iron, too. You just need a good iron (and tip), a good set of tweezers, some thin wire solder, and a magnifying device is helpful, but not required if you have good vision. A flux pen is also a must when soldering ICs.
The only time I even bother with hot air is if I have a leadless packge (e.g. DFN, QFN, etc.) or removing an IC. I use wire solder, not paste, to tin the pads for leadless packages.
In the end I just find messing around with paste to be more time consuming than using wire solder.
You personally may be faster with an iron, but for multiple boards that will simply not hold up. The time to place parts will be the same whether using an iron or reflowing paste, so that cancels out. However, I can reflow two boards with 70 components each in under 4 minutes; if you can hand-solder 140 components in 4 minutes, I’ll be amazed!
Industrial production has definitely moved away from hand soldering for a reason.
lyndon:
The time to place parts will be the same whether using an iron or reflowing paste, so that cancels out.
Not so. I solder as I place components. For Rs and Cs, this is very fast.
lyndon:
However, I can reflow two boards with 70 components each in under 4 minutes; if you can hand-solder 140 components in 4 minutes, I’ll be amazed!
Add back in your placement time and futzing around with the paste and oven and I still contend that (in my own experience), start to finish, hand soldering is faster in most cases.
lyndon:
Industrial production has definitely moved away from hand soldering for a reason.
Industrial production has also moved away from hand placement. 
Not trying to start a pissing contest. I work on boards on a daily basis and I’ve just found for the work I do, my experience, and the tools I have availble, usually just busting it out with an iron is fastest for me. I feel like a lot of people do the paste+oven thing because they are intimidated by SMT. I try to encourage people to become more proficient at hand soldering SMT. It just takes some practice and really isn’t as hard as people think it is.