Comprehensive visual guide to popular part packages? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: creyc
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2013, 05:08:48 pm
content: When I first started playing around with electronics I had NO idea what any of the crazy parts acronyms (TSSOP, TQFP, SOIC, DIP, etc..) meant. Some describe specific packages, others a family of packages, but all of it quite confusing.To be completely honest, I still have no idea what some of the terms mean, and this makes browsing digikey or mouser a pain in the butt when you have to google every acronym to find out "hmm, can I solder that??".I was hoping someone could direct myself and others to a well organized and fairly comprehensive guide to the majority of the most popular package families, their equivalents and how to visually identify them on a PCB.Hopefully this already exists someplace but much time spent on google searches has only turned up very incomplete guides with lots of missing info and packages. Some of the recent micro-ruler products have been pretty helpful in this regard but there's only so much info you can put on a silkscreen. Even just a PDF printout would be very helpful!

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2013, 05:21:29 pm
content: See:http://www.siliconfareast.com/ic-package-types.htmhttp://www.siliconfareast.com/to-types.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_integrated_circuit_packaging_typeshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-outline_integrated_circuithttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_in-line_packageAs for others that are not mentioned here, if you have a bit of brains it's enough to just go on Digikey or Farnell or Mouser and click on the datasheet and probably 99.9% of the datasheets have the drawing of the part along with the measurements listed.Search for each type of package, open the datasheet, do a print screen of the drawing and make yourself a "cheat sheet" with all the package types.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2013, 12:35:58 am
content: One thing to watch out for is that for some IC packages like SO, there are different widths. SO-14 and 16 seems to be particularly variable. Make sure your land pattern matches the width of the actual chip you are using.Digikey likes to put that in the "Supplier Device Package" as 14-SOIC and 14-SOICW for wide, but sometimes is just says 14-SO, so its safest to actually check the recommended land pattern on the data sheet.

author: creyc
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2014, 04:09:38 pm
content: Chris Gammell posted a pretty helpful PDF on reddit about surface mount nomenclature the other day:http://www.topline.tv/SMT_Nomenclature.pdf

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2014, 11:07:15 pm
content: Parts of that document are either old or not correct. From page 6:"At the present time, component handling equipment capable of handling0402 size components is not widely available. However, new equipmentcapable of handling small sized components is rapidly being developed.""Japan is leading the way towards miniaturization. It is still common forAmerican firms to use 1206 and 0805 resistors, while most Japanesecompanies use only 0805 and 0603 sizes. Americans are slowly incorporating0603 resistors and capacitors into their new designs.0402 is in the prototype stage in Japan, the USA and Europe."0402 is very much a standard size component. Contract manufacturers don't even charge more for placing them. Now 0201 and 01005 might have some issues, but 0402 is fine. 1206 hasn't been a general purpose goto package size for years. Of course you go to bigger packages if you need more wattage or voltage or something, but not across the board.Don't fear the 0402!

author: Bored@Work
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2014, 11:35:30 pm
content: PDF Metadata says the document was created in 1998 and last updated in 2013.

author: MatCat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2014, 11:45:19 pm
content: Don't fear soldering small packages either, it's really quite simple. SSOP for example is super easy, just solder bridge across and use a wick to pull out the excess, works for me every time, even with reflow equipment I still solder like that for simple one off things.It won't take you too long to get a good idea of what it all means.