Have to agree, esp. due to the Maker side of things, and yes amateur radio up to maybe UHF. Yes, to being able to actually see the parts yourself.Here are a few reasons Thru-Hole will live on
EDUCATIONAL
- Teaching soldering / breadboarding to kids
ENVIORONMENTAL
- sustainability / re-use is better with thru-hole
- right to repair movement
SERVICE / REPAIR
- things like HVAC, etc, which generally don't need a smaller form factor and often excede the loads / tolerances of SMD
- Miltitary systems especially for things deployed in the field
- refurbing retro video games / arcade / pinball (e.g. recapping)
HOBBYIST SPEND
- Makerspace / Arduino / Raspberry Pi projects
- dedicated old hobbyists with bad eyesight spending money on it. HAM radio where it get really niche but still lingers around... the future version of this will be modular synths
I wouldn't agree that SMT is "here to stay" in the sense that the packaging technology for latest devices is constantly evolving. So which version of SMT packaging is here to stay? It's to the point that there's PCB layout dissonances for even little "jelly bean" SMT parts, because they clash in size for trace routeability with respect to latest-generation SMT FPGAs, GPUs, and CPUs.
I don't see SMT as modern, nor something to strive towards, esp. for small scale manufacturing by individuals. Because SMT is primarily a robotically-driven assembly technology for throw-away products made in enormous volume by large corporations. These products are designed to be unmaintainable and unrepairable. If it could be argued that our world today needs forms of sustainablity, then it would follow that SMT is anti-modern.
Statistics: Posted by uniqview — Fri Feb 07, 2025 1:25 am
