@ Dave McLaughlin - Good tip!
@ Dave - Nice one! Iāll definitely be doing that in the future. I usually place all of one part then move on to the next. This will definitely streamline things and help reduce the possibility of placing in the wrong spot.
Yeah great tip for sureā¦ this is the thread that keeps on giving.
Speaking of, on a side topic, have any of you guys soldered tiny SMDs before with an iron? That custom Eagle part I made earlier todayā¦ well I was caught up in the tutorial and didnāt notice how minuscule the dimensions are. A 6 pin dual mosfet with a body size of 1.5mm x 2mm
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/SI1972DH-T1-E3/SI1972DH-T1-E3CT-ND/1656833
Is this doable with an iron??? I really only need about 1a per channel, but even filtering the search to much higher rated devices on digikey yields all these tiny chips. Seems like the only way I can get something bigger is through hole.
easily doable. Just do it. 
As I am sure others will say, flux is important for anything, a good soldering iron tip is important (pointy tip does not equal good; in fact a small chisel tip is about the best general purpose tip I have), as is having good eyesight (assisted is ok too). You shouldnāt have any issues, one thing I tend to do when making footprints that I think might be alignment nightmares (damn you Gadgeteer sockets!) is to make the footprints wider so that alignment is less critical, and you get plenty of the pad to hit with the soldering iron and heat up before the foot of the part. If youāre worried about soldering then you could always do that; if youāre more worried about space on your board, then donāt
As Brett said, small chisel tip works best for me.
I hand soldered the 200 pins of the ChipworkX connector of that board I posted.
0.5mm pitch.
I do this quite often with 0.5mm pitch FPC connectors on prototype boards.
As others have said, a good soldering tip and flux and I also recommend you have some 2mm wide solder braid handy. Donāt even think about the 1mm stuff. It is difficult to work with. The 2mm is ideal width and sucks up the excess solder with ease.
This is a 3D export from Eagle via EagleUp+SketchUp+some nice renderer
@ GMod(Errol) - Very nice
@ GMod(Errol) - What does the other side look like?
A notebook is not something to try and do a render onā¦
The white outline is for a heatsink, if it becomes necessaryā¦
BTW, the renderer I use with SketchUp is the free version of Maxwell plugin for Sketchup.
How about using small individual heat sinks for each chip instead. Would it make this module significantly smaller in size?
Sorry it just looks bigger than it should be.
Well, you guys seem to be pretty sure on that so I guess Iāll give it a shot! 0.5mm pitch on this as well, but itās only a 6 pin of course.
The hardware I troubleshoot for a living is legacyā¦ up until now I wouldnāt have believed you could put a dual 1a MOSFET in a 2mm package.
Each chip can theoretically do 7A peak, 3.5A per phase, so that is a total of 28A on the boardā¦ I had a 70mm x 70mm heatsink, and coulds get more cheaply, so I designed around thatā¦
I tried to get SMD screw terminals and IDC10 connectors, but they where 5 to 10 times more expensive, so I had to move the connectors to the edge of the board to make space for the heatsinkā¦
Bit rough around the edges but what do you expect for quick and dirtyā¦ 
Thanks Architect 
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Going for the Iron Man Mk7 Suit self assembling style ey? Very sweet.
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@ FireyFate - lol
@ Justin - nice job sunshine, what format did you export from sketchup as to get it into Max??
Last keyframe on the button is a bit suspect
@ HughB - thatās what happens when you spend 5 minutes on it
.3ds from sketchup.
haha yep i know that one, i didnt realise sketchup exported to 3ds, i will have to give that a go.
@ Justin - Looks great! yw