[Milsurplus] A thought on capacitors -

[Mark J. Blair]

On Feb 2, 2013, at 08:33 , Bill Cromwell <wrcromwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> More recently I have been considering how SMD parts and "dead bug, ugly"
> construction might be combined. I need to go shopping for more parts to
> investigate that.

SMD parts are definitely usable in dead-bug construction. We do that all the time at work when we need to cobble together an experiment or bug-fix a PCB. Thanks to our massive bureaucracy, it takes about 2 months to make new assembled boards appear, so we often need to make field-expedient modifications. Also, a lot of our boards are quite expensive and are needed Right Now for software development, so we can't just throw them away if an ugly fix will make them work. Heck, we use commercial ICs that cost multiple thousands of dollars each, and the cost of our own chips is staggering before they go into full production.

We often do rework where even 30 gauge wire-wrap wire is too large. Sometimes we'll use a single strand of wire from the shield braid of a miniature coaxial cable to make a connection to a small terminal. We've also been known to salvage enameled wire from relay or transformer coils.

-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/