Power Supply Kit: Through Hole or SMD? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: electrode
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 13, 2012, 11:02:27 pm
content: For those not following the "Do you want to buy the power supply kit ?" thread, Dave has asked people if they prefer a through-hole kit, or a pre-soldered SMD redesign.This poll is just to satisfy my own curiosity of how popular SMD vs through-hole is, but I suppose if options 1&2 are highly polarising, that may affect Dave's decision too.

author: sacherjj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2012, 12:02:51 am
content: I have to agree with Dave's decision to do Through Hole. Mainly for this reason. Beginners that are trying to build this as their first PSU, might not have much soldering experience.I would prefer SMD, but still have 20x more through hole components than SMD. I've found experimenting with SMD MUCH easier. Swapping resistor values, etc. is MUCH faster. Hold with tweezers while you heat it up with hot air iron, removed. No solder braid and frustration.

author: george graves
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2012, 01:41:05 am
content: Poll is missing - "I don't care - I'll buy it either way"

author: electrode
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2012, 01:45:47 am
content: Added.

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2012, 10:52:42 pm
content: I like kits in theory, but in practice I find it to be just annoying and not worth the trouble. I would go for an assembled SMD board, possibly letting the end user solder on through hole connectors or similar, then mounting it in the case.I have two basic problems with kits as a user (as opposed to a seller). The first problem is that even though I consider myself reasonably competent, I find it fairly difficult to assemble a board designed by someone else. It takes me a lot longer and I make a lot more mistakes than if I had designed the circuit and PCB myself.The second problem is that there isn't much value added by the kit. A nice thing about DIY is that you can modify/tweak things to your liking, but by the time you get a pre-made PCB and a box of parts, there isn't a huge amount you can do. If I want to modify the circuit in some way, I probably have to respin the PCB anyway. Maybe I could drop in some gold plated parts or tweak the sense resistors to change the range , but if the design is well optimized it is going to be hard to dramatically improve the performance or capability without changing everything around anyway.So while I like the idea of a kit, I think it is more trouble than it is worth for both you and the customers.

author: AlphZeta
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2012, 07:53:58 pm
content: I could not have agreed more with @ejeffrey. For a project like an PSU, I think half of the fun is the process of building it from ground up yourself, on a protoboard or something. This way, you can change components easily for different valued ones and learn what effects the values of these different components are on the design first hand.The area I think a per-designed PCB would come in handy is when critical timing is required (e.g. RF circuits) since it would be difficult if not impossible to built such circuits using protoboard without compromising performance.