[MPaulHolmes]

Ya, 99% of the problems with kits are soldering issues with the control boards. I was going to just have them placed by a machine and reflow soldered. It costs like $25-$30 per board I think from Advanced Circuits in Colorado. Given that it takes me 5 hours to solder one of those boards, that's like paying someone $6 per hour to do a better job than I ever could. I was going to use a very thick pcb (0.1") so that flexing wouldn't be much of an issue. It will be interesting to see what the reliability is.

I guess if a surface mount microcontroller didn't last very long, there would be lots of dead people in the world, and lots of law suits, so I hope that Microchip did their homework on it. But you are right, if one of those things breaks, it is not very practical at all removing one of those tiny little buggers, and the control board is basically junk then. But it's not being run very hard, so it should stay pretty cool, and have a long life, or I'm going to punch microchip right in the head!