That EEVBlog guy does some great videos. I've watched a bunch of them. I'd like to see
them all, but there's hundreds of them. Interestingly, I've hand soldered that very Microchip PIC he's showing in part 3 for a project I did a few years ago. If you can do one of those .5mm TQFP packages, you can hand solder anything.
He strongly suggests using a small chisel tip saying the conical tips don't work well. I've been using conical tips as long as I've been soldering. I use a .015" tip currently. That would be the ETS tip for the Weller WES51 and WESD51. He comments that it's hard to transfer heat with those, but I don't find that to be the case. It's true that you can't transfer heat well with only the tip in contact, but I typically go to the side of the tip when I need more contact area.
The problem with a chisel tip is there are lots of times where I just don't have room for one (which he does bring up). The only way you can do chips in a DFN package is with a conical tip. Those have no leads and only a small contact area on the pads. They're actually meant to be soldered using reflow, but they're do-able by hand.
He recommends temperatures 650-700F, but I tend to run 580-600F with the 63/37 solder which he said himself he hasn't used. If he had used it, he probably would have recommended it over 60/40 which he didn't. When 63/37 cools, it turns solid quickly and is much easier to work with. The 60/40 takes longer to solidify which you don't want, especially for SMD stuff.
I use a lot of the same tools he does. The desoldering braid is a necessity in various widths. I also use a stereo microscope similar to his. Mine has a 10x and 30x setting. I use the 30x for inspection on occasion and solder at the 10x setting.
He asserts a strong point about using fine wire solder. He's right about that, but he uses .020". I use .015" which I think is better than the .020".
One thing I haven't tried (aside from reflow) is drag soldering for ICs with higher pin counts. You do that with the round tip that has a well. It looks like it works really well from watching various videos of it. Don't know where to get the drag tips for my station though.
