[R-390] Sherwood

[Bob Camp]

Hi

Which is why you probably should re-design it with up to date parts if you wanted to keep selling them. SMT has pretty much taken over in the world of semiconductors. There are some parts (or even categories of parts) that simply are not available in a "hand solder" sort of package. Yes for a home build you can find this and that. For a commercial product that's expected to last, off to the pick and place machine ….

None of this is a knock on the fine design job he did on the SE-3, it's just the way the semiconductor business has gone over the last two decades. I doubt that we have done a single "non SMT" design at work in the last 10 years. We've probably done several thousand SMT designs. Just to be clear - to me SMT is anything that is fine enough pitch that hand solder is not economically practical. By that definition a SOT-23 is not a hand solder part (yes I've been hand soldering them since the 1970's) in a deliverable product. 

Bob

On Oct 20, 2013, at 9:33 AM, frank hughes <fsh396ss at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> One of the interesting things Rob mentioned to me when I bought an SE-3
> years ago was component availability.
> 
> The issue was difficulty obtaining some of the components that the design
> required, sounded like there were some
> items being discontinued that he needed.
> 
> Must be a pain to keep a design going and avoid having to re-design just to
> keep up with component availability.
> Frank
> KJ4OLL
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