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I need to do some soldering of SMD components, including QFN stuff. Can anyone recommend some products in the UK which I can buy to do this with? URL's would be appreciated Struggling in a sea of not quite what I want products!
There's a shop on ebay called 'the solder man', he sells lots of relatively cheap (for what they are) hot air rework stations which make smd a snap. They;re a good £200+ though.
The smallest I've soldered was 0.5mm pitch, with a 18W iron, flux, 1mm tip and some solder wick. Just soldered all the pins so it was basically a massive solder bridge, then removed the excess with the solder wick. It worked.
For QFN, I'd recommend some solder paste and a hot air pencil. Although these are expensive, I use a £40 butane iron which has a hot air attachment. You can't control the temp, but it works like a charm and is a few orders of magnitude cheaper than a basic hot air station. I think I got mine from rapidonline.com although craplins and farnell carry various models. Apparently the 'weller' hot air pencil is the favourite for SMD rework, but it was out of my price range. (cheapskate right here)
Check out www.sparkfun.com for SMD soldering tutorials. And good luck sir.
take a mooch at the RS website.... They have LOADS of SMD stuff.. Once you have decent idea of what you really need, EBAY is your friend!!!
I use a 12 watt iron with a 0.25mm tip for my SMD work, but obviously BGA type packages need specialist kit, and I limit my handheld soldering to 805 size packages.. 1206 is frustrating enough after 100 joints... I have my eye on a £500 SMD hotair soldering / rework station.. Just need to drink more beer to numb the pain of actually paying for it!!!!!!
Elektor had an article a few months back on converting a cheap toaster oven into a SMD reflow oven.. Plenty of positive feedback, so it seems to work quite well.
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I have my eye on a £500 SMD hotair soldering / rework station.. Just need to drink more beer to numb the pain of actually paying for it!!!!!! 
