SchmartBoard SMD Adapters
History
This article (review) is a summary of the original review I did back when I worked at Parallax. SchmartBoard sent us (Parallax) several samples of their SmartBoard adapters, especially a board designed for the P8X32A. I no longer have the Propeller versions of these boards, however, I recently discovered a project bin with all the adapters I had collected, but never used.
This bin (Figure 1) contained various adapters, as well as 40-pin SIP headers that could be broken down into the various lengths required for each adapter. No solder is required for the SMD / SMT component (read on).
As you can see in Figure 2, I used an unpopulated SOIC 28-pin adapter clamped into a Panavise Model:350 to help hold the SIP headers in place while I soldered them. I have seen some people use a breadboard to hold the SIP headers in place, but the heat from the soldering iron can melt the breadboard holes. You could use a perf-board or protoboard instead.
In Figure 3, I am using the QFP / QFN adapter to hold the SOIC 18-pin and larger adapters. As you can see, when you place the SOIC component on the board, the pads extend out farther than a normal board. This is because these are not ordinary pads. In facts, they are recessed tracks / channels preloaded with solder. This means that all you need is already included on the adapter PCB.
In Figure 4 / Figure 5 I have wrapped up soldering these old adapters and hope to start using them to prototype using some SMD / SMT chips I bought a long time ago, but never got around to using. These adapters will allow me to breadboard these ICs.
This is a YouTube video from the SchmartBoard website that shows how easy it is to solder using their adapter boards.
