Is there any way for a hobbiest to work with a chip this small?

Mikebits: Firstly my name is not Mr Colins.
If you saw how many emails I get with the word: “than” instead of “then,” you would realise the education system in the US is severely lacking.
Jay Leno takes similar comments more literally by interviewing people on the street and asking questions such as: “How many Eiffel towers are there in France?” “About 10,” came a reply.

Nowhere did you say my comments were inaccurate.

colin55 said:

Mikebits: Firstly my name is not Mr Colins.
If you saw how many emails I get with the word: “than” instead of “then,” you would realise the education system in the US is severely lacking.
Jay Leno takes similar comments more literally by interviewing people on the street and asking questions such as: “How many Eiffel towers are there in France?” “About 10,” came a reply.

Nowhere did you say my comments were inaccurate.

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Well let me respond to your last comment. Your remarks are baseless and without merit, not only are they mean spirited but they reveal your disdain for a America. I have no idea why this is, but your feelings seem clear.

I am not surprised that you receive many letters with word usage errors such as then and than, as most of the letters that you get are most likely from young children that do not know better than to request your poorly designed kits.

I always thought it would be nice to visit Australia, but if your attitude represents the general public there, then I think I rather visit somewhere else.

P.S. The Mr. Colins was out of respect, what should I address you as?

The most foolproof way I've ever soldered a TQFP was using a Schmartboard PCB.
**broken link removed**

If you plan on doing fine pitch SMT devices, a very valuable and often overlooked tool is a good magnifying glass. The ones with a light source are even beter. Believe me, you'll thank yourself when you inspect your work and find the microscopic solder strand across two pins....

The QX3+ USB microscope is handy too with 10X 60X and 200X magnification. They are going cheap on Ebay. I seen a buy it now price of $25 dollars and many with no bids.

There are no drivers for Vista. It works well with XP on virtualBox on Vista.

You will not get a big PCB under the lense but the microscope can be removed from the stand and hand held.

David at RobotRoom has a good review on somewhere but Google is ill so the above link is to the home page.

US$25, That's cheap. LOL.

colin55 said:

Here is a typical example of lack of education.

Most Americans don’t know the difference between “than” and “then.”
Similarly, most can’t differentiate between “their” and “there.”
In the above we have: “died a quite death” instead of: “died a quiet death” and "if their is a valid business need."

Six months ago I couldn’t even spell Electronics Technician, now I are one.

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I apologize if my misuse of words offended you, I often don't take the time to proof read my postings before sending. However, I would have been more interested on your thoughts about the content rather then format of my posting. What do you feel was the reason for the largely unsuccessful metric conversion program in the U.S.?

Lefty

I think that America and England are both just simply ignorant and spiteful against the concept of Metrification due to it being a European concept.

The faster we get away from rods, poles, chains, perches, hands, feet, yards and change everything to metric, the better. In Australia we also have metric time, in which we have only 10 hours per day. We rest 8 hours and work 2 hours.

Australia was the inventor of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI), where any work that is repeated more than three times per day entitles the worker to 14 days off work for recuperation.

I think the metric conversion tooling issue is much reduced these days. Most manufacturing equipment now will do sub 1mil resolution and is probably automated/computerised, and in the future this is going to continue. Britain is largely metric now (apart from pints of beer and some food quantities) as it is being slowly dragged into Europe and America will eventually be faced with being dragged into the rest of the world and into the metric age. This is starting to happen now, with many of the Japanese car manufacturers doing "just in time" manufacturing of Japanese product in custom built American factories. No metric country is going to convert back to a ridiculous unit like inches so you can expect all future blending will be towards metric.

To get almost back on topic re working with small chips, one very handy tool is a 5mm superbright white LED on a "stick"... I have a couple of these with LEDs of 10000mCd and a few NiCds. They are about toothbrush size and originally used for peering into machinery like VCRs, but another use is for getting 10000mCd right on the chip you are looking at through the magnifier. That is a HUGE amount of light on the target at 10mm distance and you can move it to manipulate shadows/reflections etc.

colin55 said:

I think that America and England are both just simply ignorant and spiteful against the concept of Metrification due to it being a European concept.

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I don't think it has anything to do with ignorance or spite. I would say that it is cultural - at least from my stand point. I can do metric without any problem - in an engineering sense - nuts/bolts/forces/torques/etc. But when it comes down to everyday usage I cant envision what a centimeter is but I know what an inch looks like. I can approximate a foot but not a meter. I understand how far a mile is - but a kilometer? no.

I think the metric system is great for industry but its going to be a very slow transition to everyday usage, if at all.

It will happen eventually because once an area has changed it has no reason to go back. Luckily metric time was just a joke though because the second is so ingrained in our minds by the ticking of clocks, and even the rythem of music being based on it, that I think hearing metric milihours ticking away might literally drive a person insane.

Triode said:

**broken link removed**

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The just changed the face not the internals, as you can see the min hand is past the hour but the hour hand has not yet reached 1.

Australia converted from Imperial to metric without any problems at all. We just had lots more money to play with and purchasing things became much easier to work out in-your-head.
Australia then produced plastic money (polymer money) that lasted twice as long and started selling the concept to over 100 other countries. We are now the biggest producers of money for other countries.
Of course metric time was only a jibe but think how wonderful it would be to have decimal time intervals.
I takes 1.75 hours to produce two dozen plastic boxes filled with 3 gross of balls at a costing of $145.00 How much does each ball cost and how many can be produced in 24 hours?
That’s why metric is so advantageous.
So many things, including Microsoft, were built on sand.
If only we could start afresh.

but we usually pay workers by the hour anyway, so no matter what your system it's (production per hour)/(Labor + Overhead per hour) + (material cost per unit) = (unit cost) theres no unit conversion involved.

It gets more complicated.
I rent out premises and you have have to work out how many days between 15th of one month and 10th of the next month.
Or when workers start at 9PM and finish at 3AM
Or when a machine starts a production at 11.45 and finishes at 3.25.
Everything has to be worked out on your fingers.

When Canada changed from Imperial to Metric measurement then the price of meat went up because the stores charged much more per weight thinking that stupid people won't notice.
But we have those darn signs in French all over the place.

colin55 said:

I think that America and England are both just simply ignorant and spiteful against the concept of Metrification due to it being a European concept.

Click to expand...

England started metrification in the 1970's, its been metric for the past 20 years, both in engineering units and money.

As for one, I welcomed metrification and find its far easier to use in engineering as well as financial calculations.

I cant speak on behalf of the States, I pay my taxes in the UK.

The opposite occurred in Australia as the currency doubled in numerical terms and the weight doubled.
The nett effect was a quadrupling of figures on items such as meat and vegetables.
All our servicing charges had to be halved to keep to the same "figures."