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SMT Cap Hand Soldering Is Damaging?

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bobledoux

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This site states that smt capacitors are not intended to be soldered one end at a time.

**broken link removed**

"1) Surface mount ceramic capacitors should NOT be soldered by hand, one contact at a time. They tend to crack or short internally and fail. Or worse- they may be slightly damaged and fail intermittently. Intermittent problems are the most difficult to debug....

....4) Resistors and SOT-23 MOSFETs have enough flex in their packaging to prevent damage when hand soldered."

Is this really a problem?
 
Once you've soldered the cap, before the solder cools, just heat both joints up and let the cap settle (helps with alignment as well).

I've not had any failed caps in over 100 smt boards I've hand soldered.
 
No. Absolutely not a problem. If it was, IPC certified master soldering instructors wouldn't teach to do it that way.
 
Hi there,

There are also problems with soldering SM ic chips too, in that the seal between
the pin and the package sometimes begins to leak because the temperature
profile when soldering isnt matched to the manufacturers recommendations.
This has been a known issue for years now, however many hobbyists solder
these parts too without any special soldering equipment and overall obtain
some pretty good results and the devices dont seem to fail prematurely.

If you are too worried, use two irons of the same type at the same time
to do the two ends of the cap or other part.
 
There are also caps called Flex-Term (I think thats what they're called) that are made to be withstand board flexing. They might be more forgiving, though I've never knowingly had a hand soldered ceramic SMT cap fail on me.
 
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