Gikfun Soldering Practice Kit SMD SMT Welding Skill Training Board DIY for Sc...

I have purchased three of their kits and I have found the directions to be good for one of them, so-so for another, and not good for the third. For the two lower quality ones, it looks like it is a photocopy, of a photocopy, of a photocopy, etc. so some works are hard to read and/or diagrams somewhat faded.However, the boards are clearly marked with the component types and sizes, and it is easy toatch of the component with thpads to confirm they fit. It is also good that they have various sizes (e.g., 0402, 0603, 0805, 1206) and types of components (e.g., resistors, capacitors, transistors, ICs) as well as different footprints of the ICs. Gives a bunch of difference practice on a single board.I would recommend this for someone who is familiar with discreet electronics but has never worked with, or what's more experience, with SMD soldering. I would not recommend for someone just getting started on electronics/soldering. Also, I would recommend having some kind of microscope (e.g., a TOMLOV), a good tweezer set, soldering iron STATION (with adjustable temperature), and liquid flux to be able to do this well.

I have ordered nearly all the soldering kits available on Amazon and assembled them. This particular kit is exceptional! It is of supreme quality. One thing you will find on Amazon is a wide variety of qualities of printed circuit boards. You can find a "copy" of this particular kit on Amazon, which is utter and complete garbage. It is more like plastic. THIS kit is the one you want. If you are comparing this kit to another one that looks just like it, GET THIS ONE. You will thank me later. :)

This has to be assembled under a microscope. This was a terrible purchase. Cannot recommend. Look for another beginner soldering kit.

I have a decent amount of experience with the more straightforward through-hole soldering, but I've always been reluctant to try SMD soldering. I've seen it done in online videos, so I'm somewhat familiar with the general process. The instructions that come with this kit go into decent detail on how to solder a component, but the remainder of the instruction sheet just lists a bunch of parts. The schematic printed on the board has some vague hints. It took me a while to figure out how to tell where and which way the diodes were supposed to be mounted, until I saw the same symbol on the instruction sheet that was printed on the board (curvy end negative). Also, half of the numbers on the parts sheet refer to the scale of the part and not the value of the part.So far, I've done the diodes and the 804 series capacitors and resistors. To complete this kit, I'm going to need a few more things - a finer conical tip for my soldering iron, some flux, and maybe some magnification. I did OK without the flux, but I did manage to overheat one component so that the metal tab came off the side, and there weren't any spares for that part.Since this is a beginner practice kit, they really should include a few more spares of each component. Some had spares, but most did not. Still, this is an excellent way to learn, and if you do it right, you just might end up with a thing that does stuff. I'd highly recommend watching some tutorial videos to learn techniques and what to watch out for.

I finally got this one done. The light array on the back was very nice addition to the boring soldering on the front side. I'm still learning this SMT stuff. This board presented a nice challenge for me, especially the 0402 components. Getting any smaller will require you to invest in a decent bench microscope. I struggled a bit with the resistor array packs. The ICs went down fine. I really struggled with the 0602 and 0402 LEDs, even accidentally flicked them into oblivion a couple of times. I had to order replacement pieces to finish the project. (Still didn't get the right color LED though). All in all this is an excellent board that kept me challenged. THANKS.

Really enjoyed this practice kit, it’s the third SMD kit I’ve tried. Nice variety of dunmy components for practice on the front side. Lots of LEDs and resistors on the back and it’s a surprisingly bright panel of LEDs once it’s done! You do need to apply power to both sets of input pads to light all the LEDs.

Very helpful to apprehend SMT soldiering techniques.

Missing the QFP-44 chips, not happy about that. That is what I was looking forward to. Probably will return.