Nothing is as fast and fun as prototyping on a breadboard, but at some point you will find that the chips you want to work with are only available in non-breadboard-friendly SMT/SMD (Surface Mount Technology/Surface Mount Device). Unlike most DIP chips and resistors, SMT parts do not have the leads going through holes in the PCB. Instead, they 'float' on top, with often-rectangular solder pads.

Although you may one day decide to use CAD software for laying out a custom PCB for these parts, you can do yourself a favor and prototype with SMT breakout/adapter PCBs. In this mini tutorial we'll go over how to use these. It's not hard, once you have the experience!

With ALL SMT work, having the right tools is essential! You will need tweezers. Either straight-tip style (available here)

Or curved (available here)

You'll also need a soldering iron with a fine tip. Although a good iron is a little expensive, its the most important tool and we suggest investing in a good one. Our favorite is the Hakko FX-888D with the fine SMT tip

We'll start by showing how to solder an SOIC component. Although we have many different 'package' versions available (such as SOIC/TSSOP/QFP/QFN) SOIC is the easiest to start with and its the chip I needed to work with today so that's what we're going to do :)