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Fake0Name writes -
An evening of me assembling and doing some testing on two different projects at my job. The big board is part of a data aquisition system, The small is a motor controller. I designed them both. Note: Neither board is finished at the end of the video. The small one needs a chip (a MAXII CPLD), which I have to order, And the big one is having issues because apparently digikey sent the wrong voltage regulator. Fortunately, I caught the problem before the errant voltage (2v instead of 1.2) destroyed anything
Related:
HOW TO - SMD soldering (Surface mount devices) - Link.
Solder surface mount parts with a toaster oven... - Link.
Quick helper for surface-mount soldering - Link.
HOW TO - Make a surface mount soldering iron - Link.
HOW TO - Salvage surface mount components - Link.
Hot soldering action (videos) - Link.
Using SMT components in your electronics projects - Link.
Surface mounting with hand-soldering tools - Link.
You have to be very careful when doing the oven trick. Do NOT use an old toaster oven unless you have a thermometer to help you. I have done over 20 boards using a new toaster without any failures. I moved and had to use an older toaster with a longer heat up time (that I didn't know about), and it fried my microcontroller.
But, if you have a good toaster, it is an easy way to do a lot of parts.
(Note to new makers, do not use anything smaller than 0805 packages. They are difficult to solder. However, you can still hand-solder 0204 packages, but it takes 10x as long.)
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Wow, you have a long way to go to learn surface mount soldering with an iron. I used to work in manufacturing and can tell you if you want to do magic with a good water based flux solution instead of rosin. Once you put the water based flux down you can just run the iron head back and forth across the leads of the chip, and even if they are very close together they will not join with solder, and the joints will be beautiful as if a robot did it and baked in an oven. Not to sound snobby but i always laugh everytime someone trys to experiment with soldering surface mount, it always comes out lousy and it could be so easy and magical if done the right way. You can also use the water flux with two irons at the same time to remove dual and 4 sided chips in two seconds. The secret, the flux.
good luck.
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Here are some pics how it should NOT look after soldering ;)
SMD Soldering
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Has anyone seen small cracks in the re-flow of SMT chip components solder fillets? If so, why are they occuring and how can this be fixed. These cracks do not look like disturbed solder or even "cracked" from component movement. They look like the top layer of solder cooled before the underneath solder and when the underneath solder cooled, it pulled on and cracked the top layer. Is this possible and is it a defect?
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