Soldering Iron Recommendations

[Apocalypse]

Hello All,

I have some soldering experience but not with SMD components. I heard it is possible to solder them with hand but just time consuming and requires a good soldering iron. Which soldering iron would you recommend?

Also, is it needed to solder the central pad to an IC like this? I want to make a couple benboost minis and the PCB has 8 holes under the IC. Do I feed solder through those holes?

Thanks!

 

[Eudaimonium]

It'd be extremely tough to solder that IC, but I have used LM3410 in my own boost driver designs and they come in standard pin package, like this:






If you need a schematic:



As for the hardware itself, I will always recommend the model I got,
"Aoyue 936". It's cheap, it's awesome. Just get the one with standard analog temperature controller, instead of digital one.

 

[Apocalypse]

Hey thanks for the suggestion! Looks good for $45. Also if it's that hard to solder that IC i might just get a toaster oven and make that into a reflow oven with a microcontroller. I'm using the Benboost mini design and it needs that package.

It'd be extremely tough to solder that IC, but I have used LM3410 in my own boost driver designs and they come in standard pin package, like this:






If you need a schematic:



As for the hardware itself, I will always recommend the model I got,
"Aoyue 936". It's cheap, it's awesome. Just get the one with standard analog temperature controller, instead of digital one.