SM soldering equipment to hire?

[Andrew Rothfield]

We are a small startup and want to build our first prototype, anyone know where we can hire SM soldering equipment in Melbourne? 

[Angus Gratton]

On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 12:18:21PM -0800, Andrew Rothfield wrote:
> We are a small startup and want to build our first prototype, anyone know
> where we can hire SM soldering equipment in Melbourne?

Hi Andrew,

What kind of surface mount soldering do you need to do? For most things you can get by buying a couple of hundred dollars worth of stuff (at most) if you're happy to be a bit scrappy. Maybe round it up to $400-$500 if you don't want to buy your tools directly from China. But still not huge amounts of money.

I do a fair bit of SMT soldering for work (also for fun) and the only expensive tool I use regularly is my microscope (and even that I don't use that much, it's more of a convenience than a necessity.)

Which is not to say that there aren't nicer tools I'd buy if I had lots of cash, but the cheap stuff is pretty good!

On the other hand if you're doing really small stuff (mobile phone style boards, fine pitch BGA and tight packed 0201 components, etc.) then you may need a whole new level of gear to be really efficient with your time. In which case I don't have any specific suggestion for where to go, sorry!


Angus