On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Wouter van Ooijen wrote: > I am looking at the suggested assembly-houses that have an on-line > quoting system, very interesting. But in its current form of my board > the TH takes most of the time, especially the connectors which I prefer > to keep TH, so I am not sure doing the SMD assembly externally would > save me much time. My current project has a few TH components that can't really be changed to SMT easily (terminal blocks, etc). To help, I've milled a block of plastic into a sort of negative mold for the board. After toasting on the SMT components, I plan to populate the board with TH bits, put the plastic block on top of the board, flip them both over and solder. I'm hoping that makes it less finicky to ensure that the TH devices are seated correctly. Josh --=20 A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 -Douglas Adams --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .