George L. said:
Does anyone know of a good site to teach the basics of SMD technology, I am not sure of the exact size difference betwen the 0604, 0805, 1206.
The catalog is a great resource for that
Mouser and Digi-key catalogs have a diagram of the part, with H, W, D measurements, and sometimes a scale comparison.
I believe, but I'm not 100% certain, the numbers like 0805 are measurements, in tenths of a milimeter
so a 0805 resistor is 0.8 mm long by 0.5 mm wide.
Another handy tool I made for myself, and suggest you make one - is a size comparison chart. Using the Cadsoft Eagle pcb cad program, I went into their refrence library and copied a whole bunch of different SMT packages into a pcb layout (like 0603, 0805, 1206, 1210, SOT-23, SOT-223, etc...) and then labeled each one - then I printed that out, and I now have a sheet showing the different pieces, in the proper scale, along with what their pin configurations look like.
Sometimes an eagle library isn't 100% accurate on the layout for a package, and its recommended you check the actual part to the layout if you're going to actually make a PCB