Joule Thief

[TinselKoala]

Tk is like the McGyver of the electronics world - Next up, how to make a laser out an old ruby and some polished tin plate.

No ruby needed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lru6gme1izY

[4Tesla]

No ruby needed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lru6gme1izY

Too funny.  Very cool! 

[Pirate88179]

You could probably do it with a clothes iron and solder paste.  Dab the paste onto the circuit board pads and set the SMD onto the paste. It should hold it in position. Then set the board down on the upturned iron until the solder paste melts.

Or you could make a hot air gun out of some metal scraps and a blow-dryer.

The chipquick stuff works well to keep several or even many pins of solder fluid long enough to position items during assembly. A temperature-controlled iron with a fine tip and a good magnifier are necessary.

I recently used the chipquick to remove and replace a single NeoPixel from an Adafruit NeoPixelRing assembly.  The NeoPixel is a six-pad square thing 0.2 inch per side.

Excellent suggestions and I appreciate them.  Being a newb at this I took my copper strips and cut them to very thin pieces and stuck them on a glass microscope slide.  First problem, being only about .030 wide, there was hardly any adhesive to keep them in position.  Second problem, using my special Hako super sharp point iron tip and my Bauch and Lomb microscope, when I even touched the tip to one of the legs, the damn chip not only moved out of position, it left my viewing area!!!  I quickly figured out that this was NOT the way to go.

I like the iron idea and I actually have one.  I could test the settings by melting some solder on a blank board and note the position of the temp control.

Again, I appreciate the help as, evidently, I need all I can get, ha ha.

Bill

[TinselKoala]

Here's how. Once you have your copper pads laid out you need to "tin" them. Flow some solder onto the pads. Not too much but completely cover the area where the chip will contact the pads, but not too thick, actually as thin as possible. Then place the device down onto the pads and hold it there with pressure from a tweezer. Use the Hako iron to "tack" one of the device's pins or pads to the pre-tinned copper on your board. This then will hold the device in place while you go around with the iron and solder,  and flow the remaining pins/pads with solder, finishing up with the one you just tacked down in the beginning. Usually you can just heat the pads and heat will transfer to the pins, especially if a tiny tiny bit of liquid solder is on the iron tip already. Practice makes perfect and soldering takes practice.
I wouldn't use glass for the substrate, it might crack from the applied heat.

ETA: Here's one I did _before_ I found out about ChipQuick. Because I didn't know what I was doing I wound up lifting a few traces from the board, so I replaced them with little bits of #30 wirewrap wire. Ugly, but it does work, and the 2-dollar chip replacement saved me nearly 300 dollars, the price of a new motor controller board. The irony is that this exact same PWM motor controller chip comes in a standard DIP package and there is plenty of room, the designers could have put a socketed DIP chip here instead of the tiny alternative device.

[MarkE]

Solder paste can be bought in syringes or little make-up size cans with screw lids.  Personally, I would go with the cheaper syringes, because solder paste has a limited shelf-life.