Sigh ... I knew its coming, it was thru hole, but now SO too

[BravoV]

My eyes is getting weaker and weaker, now the SO form is also joining the through hole club.    ...sigh




Source -> Chip Carrier Packaging Grows on Widespread Adoption of QFN Package

[Rerouter]

i must be reading this wrong in some alarming way, this to me says SO packages are by far the most popular on that ?

[BravoV]

i must be reading this wrong in some alarming way, this to me says SO packages are by far the most popular on that ?

Its starting to decline, thats what I meant.

[amyk]

Bare die are going to be the new trend, even BGAs are starting to get old...

[Dago]

It's a growing problem in the industry, but also inevitable because a lot of new tech simply can't be hand soldered if you want it to work. For example we developed a product with 868MHz radio comms and no-one does a modern radio IC in anything other than no-lead packages because there is no way you would get the performance with a hand soldered board. They expect you to start with an evaluation board or maybe a 3rd party module and then for production just plonk their reference PCB layout down and have it assembled by a machine. Of course there is a nasty prototype stage in the middle where you end up paying thousands for a small number of assembled PCBs, but I guess they don't care about hobbyists and expect companies to just cough it up.

Soldering "no lead" packages like QFNs and LGAs is dead simple with hot air station (plus pre-heater for bigger/multilayer boards). The surface tension of the solder pulls the package to its place.

BGAs on the other hand are difficult to solder by hand.

[Psi]

I find DFN chips drag solder really well and are faster to solder than SSOP/TQFP (which often form bridges that need clearing).
For DFN I usually put some solder paste down and hotair reflow them, just so they will stay on the pcb and to get some solder under the chip.
Then I use a nice clean iron and some 0.3mm solder to drag across the side of the chip. It comes out perfect with one pass 95% of the time.

Of course this is DFN were there's some of the pad exposed on the side of the chip.

[peter.mitchell]

Usually I just tin the shit out of the pads and put some flux paste to hold it in place and how air it in place, I find solder paste ok/good but i find it more hassle then just walking your iron with a ball of solder on it over the pads.

[free_electron]

I guess they don't care about hobbyists and expect companies to just cough it up.

-post edited because people don't get sarcasm apparently-

When are people going to realise that NOBODY cares about hobbyists ! there is no money to be made handing out free samples.
everybody is gunning for the design win for the next multimillion volume smartphone or tablet or other doohickey.

According to the big industry, hobbyists are the freeloading scum of the earth , keeping old crap alive and that prevents sale of a new item. Which is what big industry wants: sell more stuff, make more money.

And yes, i'm a hobbyist too and also keep old crap alive so i dont have to buy new crap. but that is not what the industry wants.

 two ends of a stick

[ejeffrey]

hobbyists are the freeloading scum of the earth

This shit has gone on long enough.  Calling people scum of the earth for liking easily solderable components?  You need to get a fucking sense of reality. It isn't just this one instance, you are repeatedly abusive and insulting over the littlest things, and you need to learn to keep that to yourself.  Your knowledge is a positive influence here, that that kind of personality defect makes it less enjoyable for everyone.

[larry42]

hobbyists are the freeloading scum of the earth

This shit has gone on long enough.  Calling people scum of the earth for liking easily solderable components?  You need to get a fucking sense of reality. It isn't just this one instance, you are repeatedly abusive and insulting over the littlest things, and you need to learn to keep that to yourself.  Your knowledge is a positive influence here, that that kind of personality defect makes it less enjoyable for everyone.

I think the sarcasm in free_electron's post was lost there...

[Dave]

This shit has gone on long enough.  Calling people scum of the earth for liking easily solderable components?  You need to get a fucking sense of reality. It isn't just this one instance, you are repeatedly abusive and insulting over the littlest things, and you need to learn to keep that to yourself.  Your knowledge is a positive influence here, that that kind of personality defect makes it less enjoyable for everyone.

[David_AVD]

1000 hobbiest or small businesses buying ten to 1000 components a piece gives them more profit then one big company with cloat buying one million components.

I'd say they are doing it to get their brand in the hands of the business users, specifiers and purchasers of tomorrow.   

[free_electron]

hobbyists are the freeloading scum of the earth

This shit has gone on long enough.  Calling people scum of the earth for liking easily solderable components?  You need to get a fucking sense of reality. It isn't just this one instance, you are repeatedly abusive and insulting over the littlest things, and you need to learn to keep that to yourself.  Your knowledge is a positive influence here, that that kind of personality defect makes it less enjoyable for everyone.

Dude, chill out. Learn to recognise sarcasm...

It's not me calling hobbyists the scum of the earth.
Big commerce considers hobbyists the flea's of the dog. They want to move billions of parts. Sell new things. And here is a bunch of freeloaders (their nomenclature, not mine) making a 5 cent solution circumventing all kinds of 'security' ( a different name for 'market protection technology') which prevents big industry from making even more money. They hack and crack software and hardware. This requires more effort from big industry to develop more 'market protection technology'. This is a pure NRE for them. They don't like that !

So yes, in their view we hobbyists are the scum of the earth. Hobbyists pretent to be a small company , begging for free samples , have no qualms calling the tech support (tech support is already considered a pure loss factor for big industry)  and all for what ?

Got it now ?

The drive towards smaller packages is not malicious. It is simply the progress of technology. There is only so much room in you smartphone to cram all that stuff in there. So you have a choice : put you 19 inch rack cell phone on wheels and hook up a generator , or have it be the size it is now.

SO packages are, today, already considered 'power' packages for things like big mosfets in so8.
Everything is shifting towards lower power consumption, lower voltage , so it only makes sens everything shrinks.

But no need to worry, SO and tssop will be around for a long time. DIL on the other hand is dwindling fast. In another 10 years that will be gone apart from some historical or exotic parts.

Now, on the companies becoming more open towards hobbyists: that may be true in the fiercely competitive microcontroller market. That market is a race to the bottom, and they have started digging.... You can get a 32 bit mcu for 32 cents now...

But, have you tried it for other stuff ?
Try to get a few samples of an ad converter that cost 30$ a pop.. It aint going to be that easy..
Try contacting companies like Marvell to get a hold of one of their chips. You wont make it past the phone operator in 99% of the cases . these guys immediately sniff out that this is for a repair or a hobby hack as these parts are so complex nobody, apart from huge customers, deals with em.

Same for broadcomm and many other companies. The dudes that made the raspberry pie only succeeded because someone from broadcomm was on the team. Without that they would have had no chance at all. And you saw this afterward as well. As soon as a big ticket client started buying those chips broadcom pulled the plug. The pi's were backordered for months. Simply because all available chips were allocated towards the volume order. They didn't give a rat's fart that there was a small company buying a few thousand chips per month.. They simply told em. Sorry , we can't supply.

If you are a small startup and have designed something around such a component , and this happens, it is game over. You can't deliver ,and your supplier doesn't care. You are too small.

Using a part like an l 741 does not hold a risk. There is plenty companies making that one., but anything single source , and target focused is dangerous.

[David_AVD]

Hobbyists pretent to be a small company , begging for free samples , have no qualms calling the tech support (tech support is already considered a pure loss factor for big industry)  and all for what ?

...

Try contacting companies like Marvell to get a hold of one of their chips. You wont make it past the phone operator in 99% of the cases . these guys immediately sniff out that this is for a repair or a hobby hack as these parts are so complex nobody, apart from huge customers, deals with em.

I'm amazed at how brazen some people are about asking for samples.  They have no problem asking when it's for a repair or a small job that they're charging someone else for.  I guess some manufacturers are very generous with their samples program.  On another forum, I've seen someone design a new board, then tell everyone else that they can get the $2 micro for it as a free sample.  Sheesh!

I rarely ask for (free) samples.  For a small business (like mine), the cost factor doesn't come into it.  We just want to try something and don't want to buy the MOQ.  A few months ago I asked a USA company about getting a sample enclosure and how we could pay for it.  A couple of days later I get a call from the local dist rep (that I didn't know did that product) and within a couple of weeks he dropped in two sample units at no charge!

Ironically, bigger businesses (with much larger R&D budgets) may rely on the sample being free as it bypasses their (possibly very slow) procurement system.  In some places, getting a purchase order together for a couple of chips is a nightmare.  Much easier for the manufacturer's rep to just give the part away.

[MatCat]

^^^ I think that is a silly way to look at samples, I sample almost everything I can for any project I am working on, even if my product only sells 1000 in a year the cost of the 4 I got for free is more then covered back in the 1000 I bought for production.  GASP I even sample parts that I may not even be fully planning on using, sometimes I sample the same part from multiple companies for comparing etc etc.  Plus I will save money any where I can, I am not the type of person who would sign off on $1500 for a probe holder, it's just pissing money away, if the big companies want to do that go ahead it's their money but I am a bit more frugal and look at the world a bit differently then that. 

[free_electron]

I’m not saying some company won’t leave you hanging if you are stupid enough to use single source parts in your design. That type of behaviour is hardly exclusive to the electronics industry. If you designed a widget and had a customer buying 1000 units a year off you and then some one wanted say 1k units a month who would you prioritize?

Some expensive and highly specialised stuff is going to be hard and expensive to get so their loss don’t use them.

I gave the raspberry pi as a schoolbook example of how much big companies care about the little guy.
The rpi guys had orders for 40.000 parts. Broadcomm blu tly told the, to get stuffed. They couldn't deliver until months later as they had to fullfill an order. Even worse. The rpi guys placed their order before the bigger order came in. You'd expect them to fullfill at least as a fifo. First order in first served. Nope. They pulled the plug. Sorry bub.

There is a market for budget test equipment. But it aint the hobbyist.. Its the small startup , and especially the market inside china and india. There's plenty of budding little companies that will buy that stuff. See a hole fill a hole. Sure they sell lots to hobbyists, but their target is small companies.
Hobbyists don't need gpib or LXI interfaces... Yet almost all these budget machines have one or both ...