1206 or 0603

[adafruit]

so i have to stock reels and im thinking of going with 1206's since that will let others build the design. but 0603's are cheaper it seems

whatcha think?

[freaklabs]

I've found not much difference between soldering 1206 or 0805. 0603 might be a bit small and slightly intimidating for those new to soldering. The kit stores in Akihabara usually have 2-part kits. One part consists of a PCB with all the SMT parts mounted and the other part is the thru hole portion that people put together. It seems to work out pretty well for them. Here's an example a kit in Akihabara with mixed thru hole and surface mount:

http://www.akizukidenshi.com/catalog/g/gK-03153/

[oskay]

I use 0805 whenever possible. For whatever reason, it seems easier to find certain values in 0805 than 1206, and usually at a better price than either. Price 10 uF caps, for example, and you'll usually find that 0805 has the best price point.

Also, they're a good compromise size. Big enough that they can be done by hand without magnifiers or a particularly pointy tip, and yet not quite so space-wasting as 1206s.

[adafruit]

good point, i always found 0805 to be 'about as large' as 1206 so we never bothered with em.

0805 it is!!!

[Zener]

0805 it is!!!

Correct decision.

[ktownsend]

I started picking up only 0805 since I figured they would be easy to hand solder (no harder than 1206), but have recently moved to 0603 since they are cheaper in reels and aren't really that much harder to solder (though I use a scope since my eyes are banned). I'd say 0805 is the best compromise for everyone, though.

[DwayneR]

I do most of my designs with 0805 components - reasonably small but still easy to place and solder by hand. 1206 is just so darned huge!

And - I suspect that 1206 components are going to become somewhat more scarce as time goes on.

I regularly hand-solder 0603 components for my own projects but would not ask anyone in my shop to do that - they are just that little bit too small.

dwayne

[freaklabs]

I use 0402 components for RF. They're fine to work with and you can practice by sprinkling black pepper on to your board and picking up the individual grains with your tweezers.

[adafruit]

freak, you are banned from this thread!

[martini martin]

I normally only use 0603 components at the job and in my personal projects.

In my opinion you should go with the smallest you can handle. In the end it's always nice to make your PCB as small as possible. It looks nice and it's cheaper.
I have never tried 0402. Maybe I will in the future. Sometimes it would be really nice to have resistors that fit on the pins of small SMD packages.

[westfw]

i always found 0805 to be 'about as large' as 1206

Some of this seems to be due to rather inconsistent footprints in the default eagle libraries (and eagle libraries from elsewhere as well.)

Notice the unusually small spacing between the pads of the eagle 0805 R & C packages, and how much smaller Sparkfun's 0805 package is compared to the EAGLE default (but then the SF 0603 package looks like a straight copy from eagle.)

(the eagle chipled packages look like the best set to me...)

EAGLE has separate footprints for wave vs reflow soldering, and people who are hand-soldering may wish to use larger pads to leave more room for the tip of the iron, so it looks to me like it gets "complicated" pretty quickly.

[adafruit]

the Eagle 0805 pads are notorious, they should be changed in the distro. ridiculous that they have less clearance than 0603. personally, we redo nearly every package for the kits.

[westfw]

Here's another drawing with actual-size rectangles drawn to show how real components would line up (assuming that they're really
60x30 mils, or whatever.)

[westfw]

PS: I've found some 0201 components in my most-frequented dumpster. Sigh. I'm too old to use them, I think.
The 0402s MIGHT be usable.

One problem is that below 0805 or so, you have to start paying attention to resistor wattage, even for sort of "nominal" applications. 8 volts across 1K exceeds 1/16W...

[westfw]

0805s do seem to be a reasonable compromise. I bought a bunch of 1206 reels of resistors (from eBay for cheap, so no big loss) because of their supposedly easy handling, but it's depressing that the footprint is a bit bigger than a vertically mounted TH resistor.
(OTOH, 1206 resistors seem to be about the smallest size that still has the value actually marked on the resistor bodies...)