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Comment by errantspark | Hacker News Reader

Looks like an 0805, that's not too bad if you have decent fine motor skills and two soldering irons. If you have enough motor control for decent handwriting you'll be fine, just don't get frustrated and dwell too long, you can practice with the irons off.

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The photo shows an R0402 on it. 0805 is definitely doable by a beginner. 0402 though is at the edge of what could be done without a microscope and not something I’d want to touch with beginner gear.

Ahh yeah I think you're right, I was just going by feel from what I remembered of the board.

This is the operation:

> Desolder R615 0 ohm resistor and solder it to R614, or bridge R614 with solder.

It's just a jumper! This is super easy for a beginner because you only need to desolder and then drop a blob of solder.

Yesterday I encouraged a sharp but inexperienced coworker to depopulate the automatic reset capacitor on an Arduino Nano. He was quite skeptical about the rework, so I went ahead and popped it off with a single iron tip to show him how. I then put the cap back on but offset so that it wouldn't get lost in case we wanted to put it back. I'm pretty sure it was 0402. I'm also pretty sure it was the right capacitor... :-)

I'd say it's actually easier to remove an 0402 than, say, a 1206. Since it's so small, both pads heat up to the point of melting whether you intended to or not, and then the surface tension takes away the component with the iron tip. No need for any specialized reworking equipment. I think 0805 is the sweet spot for easy hand assembly and rework, though.

You don't need two irons, you can touch the tip sideways and it'll melt both pads and the part will stick onto the tip by surface tension.

I think you're off by a lot, the black square at the top left is probably a QFN-24 (i.e. ~0.5mm pin pitch), which would mean it's actually an 0402.

I agree with you, a 0805 would look pretty big there. I think some of those large caps are 0805.

you could use an appropriate hot air station + some flux as well I think (and a good pair of tweezers designed for electronics)

Also, kapton tape is very useful if you're afraid of damaging stuff around it

I did the mod with a Pinecil and some tweezers in my kitchen table in 15 minutes. Might look hard but if you have steady hands and a $25 soldering iron you can do it without issues

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