PIC18F97J94 0.5 mm TQFP

A pair of friends, brothers, own a small business manufacturing custom PCBs and systems. The older of the two has always done all of the hardware and the younger the software. The older brother had a heart attack several years ago and has had a shake and weakness in his right hand ever since. He can no longer solder small components so I have taken over that function for him. I love soldering and I love the challenge.

This is a PIC microcontroller that I soldered onto a breakout board for them. It's a 0.5mm pitch (0.5 mm from the center of one pin to the center of another pin) TQFP package. I used a Weller WESD51 soldering station with a PES51 soldering pen and an ETGW angled, cupped soldering tip.

I do all of my fine soldering under an Olympus SZ40 binocular microscope that I bought for $200 a couple of years ago from a microscope shop in Montreal.