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Addressable LED hell

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cbowen:
Hey all. So, I've been using addressable LED's (WS2812b and SK6812) for a while in strip and breadboard-friendly form. I made my first prototype PCB's last week and started on trying my hand at soldering the SMD 6812's. Results have been pretty bad. Everything checks out on the PCB with a meter on all connections. I haven't been able to get more than two in a row working consistently. I started working with them as soon as I unsealed them. My iron was turned down. Just a quick dab of solder and get out, no melted plastic. These things are making me nuts.

Anyway, I started looking online and am finding out how delicate these things are. Really low reflow temperature, failure rates. etc. I think I'm about done with this experiment. So then I started thinking about other form factors. Through-hole isn't an option because there will be components on the opposite side. The breadboard-friendly ones though (seen here https://www.adafruit.com/product/1558?gclid=Cj0KCQjw2v7mBRC1ARIsAAiw34_7LFtj5KBFgzBI7Ko_i0QQKyPMl4eV25bOCzR2U8cMyCRUfZslQdIaAoalEALw_wcB) gave me an idea.

This is probably going to sound ridiculous, but I've never had a failure on these. What if I made footprints for these and soldered them on a bigger board? Advantages include: the LED's are already soldered on, they include the decoupling caps, and it would reduce board complexity because they're 6-pin instead of 4-pin. I figure, lay them on the footprint, fill the hole with solder, and profit? Board on board love? I'm an idiot, aren't I?

james_s:
Hard to really say, have you had much practice soldering surface mount parts? I've not actually tried soldering one of those specific LEDs, are they in fact known to be fragile?

cbowen:
My experience echoes a lot of what I've seen online. VERY sensitive to heat, some colors work, some stop, lights coming on with no instructions at all, etc.

I can solder the SMT caps and resistors seemingly fine. I guess for this prototype phase, I just want to get past this part to show proof of concept. If it ends up going into production and pick-and-place, it probably won't be a problem then.

cbowen:
The iron is as low as it goes, the dial says 200'. I'm using 1.0mm 60/40, 2% flux.

Is the breadboard LED a ridiculous idea?

Kalvin:
Have you seen this video? The soldering iron needs to have a very fine tip ie. only very little heat will transfer to the LED. Also, using soldering paste seems to be the way to go.


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