amigakid wrote:
... I am a very experienced solderer on both through hole and surface mount, ...
What is your technique for surface mount soldering? One pin at a time or do you have an oven? One time a tool slipped and I broke some SMT pins on my then-$1000 Warp Engine accelerator. A technician friend at work fixed it for me using a video microscope and some type of solder paste that melted and adhered to the pins when blasted with a heat gun. None of that equipment is usually found at home.
There used to be a conductive epoxy that was used in place of solder by some hobbyists, but the danger of shorting pins would be high.
