Saturday 22 June 2013

Poor man's MSOP soldering

MSOP stands for Mini Small  Outline Package, that means that width of 4 leads is just 2mm, exactly the width of a row in a stripboard... Let see how can we solder that though.

On a piece of wood we tape carefully 4 thin wires. We start my taping one wire and then taping again a second one at a distance of 2mm, take as much time as you need, this step is crucial, place on top the MSOP to make sure they have the right separation. If you need to make any adjustments use the blade of a cutter to move the wire. Good now you have the top one and the lower one. For the 2 inner ones, just put them in between and fix them with tape, then use the cutter blade to make sure they are all spaced equally


We place the MSOP on top and we tape it, then make the necessary adjustments in the separations of the wires. Once we are happy we tape the IC this time more tightly.
 Time to solder, use flux and apply the iron firmly as with any other SMD
Once we have one side done we do the other side, this time it will be easier since the other half is firmly fixed, time to correct the separation of the wires too.
 Once we remove the tape we check the back of the IC to make sure all looks good and clean.
 We cut the thin wires by just applying some firm vertical pressure with a cutter.

 Time to  place it on the stripboard, we carefully separate the wires and we insert them through the holes,
 And voila, the breakout board :)