Reverse surface mount – breadboard small SMT components

Using some proto-board, epoxy filler, and a conductive pen, you can quickly create a custom breakout board for small SMT devices on the cheap.

It’s a know fact that the surface mount devices are becoming more and more popular leaving behind the traditional through-hole mounting method. While for the electronics industry surface mounting brings a lot of benefits (one of them being the ability to pack more components per square inch) for the regular hobyst surface mount devices are often times a “show stopper”.

This tutorial for is those of you who absolutely need to mount a small surface mount device for prototyping purposes and do not have the means or time to pefrom a traditional surface mount. There’s obviously a “correct” way to mount a SMD component and I highly recommend reading the Surface Mount Soldering guide at Curious Inventor first before attempting this method. However it’s always good to know that there’s an alternative method that does not require any investments in expensive SMT equipment or materials.

In this tutorial I’ll describe how to mount an analog LIS244AL accelerometer (data sheet), that comes in a tiny leadless LGA-16 package. The size of the component is 4x4x1.5mm. It has 16 solder pads, each is 0.3×0.4mm. This is the tinest component that I ever have to deal with. When I first saw this device my first thought was that there’s now way I can mount this little device without creating a custom PCB and using the traditional surface mounting method.

For the purpose of using small SMT components in your prototyping work, it looks like a really handy way to make things a bit more hobbyist friendly.

“Reverse” Surface Mounting of small leadless SMD components