Digging my heels, kicking and screaming”no, no, no!” I can be a bit obstinate at times. I have no intention of trying to put together even a small percentage of the project boards. I just wanted them all in one place and I’m vain enough to have wanted a sticky of my very own even if I did little to earn it.
By the way, is it ready to post as a beta, or what?
You can hot air reflow both sides, the PCB keeps the components on the other side from getting too hot and re-melting and/or surface tension holds the components on if the solder does melt
I hot air both sides with this: ebay/stampabilities-heat-embossing-gun, about $20 - $22 from several places. Got my first BLF22DD's coming - just shipped from OSHPark today.
Thanks for the ideas, Tom E’s suggestion seems like the cheapest way, I wouldn’t have found that on my own. But I’m looking for an excuse to upgrade my soldering iron also, for a few dollars more than the Yihua 858D I’ve found a couple 2 in 1 units that seem to fit the bill.
I had bad luck with a bottom dollar hot-air / iron combo unit like that. It was an 852D+ clone marked as 952D or something. After <6mon the iron stopped heating consistently. I switched to the Hakko FX-888 for my iron and haven’t looked back.
IIRC I later learned that Aoyue was a decent brand among the cheap ones. I have no personal experience and I’m a little foggy on that, so I could be wrong.
I’m using a Yihua 937D iron with several different tips that works well now but read E5 on the display intermittently and wasn’t heating well. It turns out there was a cold joint in the wand and once fixed(the last time I used my old 20w pencil) I haven’t looked back. Not sure if I’ll go with air or oven first if I go reflow at all.
There’s all kinds of embossing guns and they can be found everywhere. Sounds like a plan. I sure am not going to pay anything more than a few bucks and that sounds like a cheap way. I’ve been using my soldering gun for everything. It works, but it would probably save time with this. Of course, I would have to switch to solder paste.
That was the big expense for me! Especially since I first purchased some “Mechanic’s Soldering Paste” in the little jar like what RMM & the Chinese sellers have. I couldn’t get that to do what I wanted, so I ended up ordering some Kester EP256 in a syringe from CML Supply. I purchase through eBay where they don’t seem to stock it anymore, but this is what I got. I used it for the first time last night and was pretty happy w/ the results.
This is what I bought and use: http://www.kd5ssj.com/solderpaste. Highly recommend the 21 Ga needle. I use the 23, and it's a pain. It's a small amount but you don't need much. By the time you use it up, it will probably be expired. Recommended by a friend - this guy is a hobbyist - may take a few days to get it shipped, depending... I bought mine in Sep 2013 and probably half left, though I've used it a lot more lately with the OSHPark boards.
I get $3.55 shipping, total of $9.55 for 1 paste syringe, 1 21 Ga needle.
You think it might be worth getting stencils made? It shouldn't be a big deal for this driver, but with the Meld drivers I think I'd going to want all the help I can get.
So I have got one of these puppies piggybacked to courui amd Richard put it together with electronic switch filmware so I solder one side of switch to pad 2 and the other to pad - ? I am only getting light if I press and hold e switch no modes ? What’s wrong?