Philba: Using TH components to pass signals, I mount my parts as tight to the board as possible, caps for example so a top pad is impossible to solder (solder top heat from bottom and slide through but kinda shotty).
As every different pcb package I have used they all route top/bottom signals to TH pads and its annoying, in eagle I always gotta pull it off to the side and put a via usually close enough the via and pad are touching just to I can access it (I solder via/smt/th shortest to tallest)
Where do you guys get your track pins? digi-key ‘track-pins’ gets a whole lot of nothing, maybe they have another name I don’t know.
Also anyone know how to bump smt parts to the bottom layer on eagle? It would really help density if I could mount all my passives on the bottom.
busonerd:
I usually go to Active Electronics; its at 1st + boundary. Most of the time though, I just buy from digikey. Its harder to visualize, but you can’t beat the price + selection… just make sure to buy from the .ca version, otherwise it ships from the states, and costs an arm and a leg.
RE the ex-SFE guru; I was a sparkfun electronics person for a year, worked on some of their designs; but then my visa ran out and I came back here :P.
Cheers,
–David Carne
David, I didn’t realize you were here…
I think Active is quite a rip off, pricewise. Lee’s on Main has much better prices on most things, but a different range…
iceblu3710:
Wow, good looking work Winston! I almost didn’t believe it!
I was diggin through the classified section of my newspaper and found an add for an elec wholesaler called ElectroSonic and my goodness their SMT passives are DIRT cheep. I just got a list 58 unique items, minimum 100pcs, commons 300pcs, 1k,10k,470,330 600pcs and im not even at $30. Their a lower mainland british columbia company if I like the parts and service ill report back about them.
Sorry its taking so long before I place my electrosonic review but sofar my cart has 58 values of 5% 603 resistors 100pcs each, 1k, 10k, 100k 1% 600each and price is $30, caps are next and will be ~2.5x more I presume, Its a good search but you cant filter my minimum quantity (same as digikey) which really sucks as you click 5 links to find the one good price. But im averaging $0.005 per part lol ($30/6000pcs)
Sofar I realize they have passives pbfree ~0.17 and leaded ~0.013 since I don’t care about lead 90% of the ones I ordered are leaded.
Ill place the order tomorrow, found a bunch of fun dip lcd 7seg for cheep on digikey, my one project requires 8 7segs and cheapest I can find is $3.15/ea electrosonic seems only cheep on passives, more on everything else.
I agree that Active is a ripoff, I useto goto the one in Calgary, AB all the time just to find parts then order online. Where is Lee’s?
Lee’s is at 4522 Main, and two doors down is Main Electronics. Lee’s is the one I like, but if he doesn’t have what I want, then I can just pop in next door.
I’m complete unqualified to talk about anything SMD, other than it’s something I’d like to get into. I noticed that SureElectronics on Ebay have a bunch of kits:
wow, there’s a lot of us from the lower mainland on here…
I generally get everything from DigiKey these days (as I only to smd, and the local stores never have what I need even in TH), except for chemicals and a few other things - those I generally get from either Main, Lee’s, or RP… I don’t think I’ve ever been to Active though, nor even heard of Electro Sonic.
Some pics for the fun of it. They don’t have much besides passives and everything else is expensive but 58000pcs total (58 diff values, res/caps/ind) for $52 shipped? I think thats a good deal!
iceblu3710:
Well I finally placed my electro-sonic order, Definatly a good company.
$25 minimum CA order, $8 shipping, exactly the same as digi-key.
They ship FedEx priority overnight, I prefer FedEx over digi-keys Porolater but they get here pretty much the same day.
I feel sorry for the guy who had to pick my order, everything in a medium sized plastic ziploc bag in a 1x1x1ft box:
… …
Some pics for the fun of it. They don’t have much besides passives and everything else is expensive but 58000pcs total (58 diff values, res/caps/ind) for $52 shipped? I think thats a good deal!
