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BooksB fg. Literatura ®

Manuał on soldering

SOLDERING HANDBOOK FOR PRINTED CIRCUITS AND SURFACE MOUNTING, by Howard H. Manko. Van Nostrand-Reinhold Inc., 1986. Hard covers, 235 x I60mm, 430 pages. ISBN 0 442 26423 2.

Gonc are thc days when electronic equipment was put together by rows of people at benches wielding smoking soldering irons (and breathing in lungfuls of resin vapour with lead flavouring). Nowadays it’s PC boards, pick and place machines, wave soldering ma-chincs and surface mount technology — and in many ways that’s a big improve-ment. There’s not ncarly as many dry joints, for a start; and hopefully less lung cancer than otherwise, too.

But as a result of thcse changcs, soldering has itsclf become so much morę than a superficial and matter of fact subject. (It never really was that, of course, but many people used to think it was nothing morę than that.) Now it’s a technology in itself, and one can spend a career specialising in its com-plexities.

The author of this book has done just that, starting as metallurgist with IBM and moving through positions with a solder and Hux supply firm to eventually become a consultant and recognised au-thority on the subject. In this book he provides almost a distillation of the knowledge he has acquired during his 30-year career. There’s a wealth of in-formation on almost every conceivable aspect of soldering, which Tve never

84 ELECTRONICS Australia, September

seen brought together before. It’s up to datę, too — with lots of discussion on SMD technology and modern devicc packaging such as LCCs, PLCCs and pin-grid arrays, and tcchniques such as vapour-phase reflow soldering, etc.

In short, it*s without a doubt the most comprehensive book on modern soldering technology that Fve ever seen. It’s also very well written and presented. If you*re after a really good book on the subject, this is the one.

The review' copy came from Van Nos-trand Reinhold, but copics should be available from all major bookstores.

(JR)

•    ^ UW

IC Circuit cookbook

HANDBOOK OF PRACTICAL IC CIR* CUITS, by Harry L. Helms. Prentice-Hall Inc, 1987. Hard covers, 236 x I59mm, 163 pages. ISBN 0 13 380833 5. Recommended retail price $85.50.

Those who’ve been around in clec-tronics a while will have heard of Harry (Larry) Helms, who has been writing books and magazine articles in the USA for as long as I can remember. As he says in his preface to this latest book, he grew up like me in the days of vacuum tubes, and has found it very ex-citing following the developments from tubes through transistors to ICs.

In this book he provides a down-to-earth “cookbook” of practical and proven circuits, using readily availablc ICs. The emphasis is on Circuit configu-rations that can be plugged into a de-

1987

sign, without having to design them all over again from scratch. There*s also in-troductory materiał covcring how ICs are madę, how they work and how they developed, and basie tcchniques for breadboarding and deve!oping circuits.

Both analog and digital ICs and circuits are covered, from basie op-amp configurations through voltage rcgula-tors and phase-locked loops to TTL and CMOS logie circuits. Chips covered in-clude the 741, the 555, the LM380, the 1458, the LM339, the XR2206, the LM3909 and numerous digital devices from the 7400 and 4000 scries logie chips. At the end there’s a handy chap-ter on “tying it all together”, covering interfacing different device families, debugging and troubleshooting, and usc of data sheets.

As you^łd expect from Harry Helms. the text is clearly written and easy tc follow. My only gripe is that the price of the book seems pretty steep consider ing its modest size.

The review copy came from Prentice Hall of Australia, who advise that it*: available from all major book Stores. (J.R )

All about robots

INDUSTRIAL ROBOT HANDBOOK by Richard K. Miller. Fairmont Pres? Prentice-Hall, 1987. Soft covers, 279 212mm, 686 pages. ISBN 0 88173 023 * 0 13 463183 8. Recommended reta price $217.95.

No, I haven’t madę a mistake wit the price, that’s the price quoted by th distributors! It must be about the mo: expensivc paperback Pve ever seen -but thert again, it’s probably the bigge: paperback Tve ever scen. It also pr< vides a lot of up-to-date information o the current State of the art in industri: robotics, information that is no doul valuable to many production enginee

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