gEDA-user: How small a part can you hand place?

[Stuart Brorson]

> 
> 
> I just noticed that Digikey is now carrying 01005 sized parts.
> Looks like they are about the size of a flake of black pepper.
> 
> How small a part can you realistically place with tweezers,
> soldering iron and/or toaster oven?

I regularly do 0603 with tweezers/magnifying glass/Metcal iron with
fine tip.  I once had a board with 0402 parts.  ISTR doing a little
manual rework on it, although not much involving those small parts
thankfully.  

> Something else I don't understand in the Digikey
> description is that they say "01005 (EIA) 402".
> What does the "EIA 402" mean?

The EIA maintains a parallel nomenclature defining the size of SMT
passive parts.  I belive it may be metric, and may be more common in
Europe (although I could be wrong).  In America, we use the more
informal nomenclature 1206, 0805, 0603, etc. which is common in the
industry, but doesn't have a standards body defintion behind it (as
far as I know).

Stuart