Now that the solder stencil is ready for use, I went ahead and tried it – using solder paste and a (not-so-wide) squeegee type tool. Here’s the result:
If you look closely, you can see how nicely the paste ends up on the pads:
The stencil needs to be cleaned for future re-use, though:
(sorry for the incandescent light reflection)
Ok, now the tricky part – the “pick and place machine” (me). The result:
That’s the illuminated magnifying glass I’m using, by the way.
Looks perfect to me:
Baking now, in my JeeNode-based reflow controller:
Hm, this stuff is considerably smellier than before. Here’s the result…
Wait a minute – if you look closely you can see that a lot of the pads show up as a gray surface, not the shiny metal I was expecting!
WHOOPS – I used a temperature profile for leaded solder, but this is lead-free solder – silly me!
Stay tuned for the rest of this story… tomorrow.
I really can’t wait to get my hands on one of these babies! It looks marvelous small and handy. A candidate to dethrone Boarduino& Arduino Nano? ;) But thumbs up for going SMT!
If you get tired, maybe this can be your next project?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__dEMKzkLYc
Ooh, I’d love to automate that work…
Also found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmCVSmbuMrc
Hi can you provide detail description your JeeNode-based reflow controller and device for soldering. Are you try soldering BGA chips also ?
Thanks
See these previous posts for some more info:
http://jeelabs.org/2009/07/14/reflow-controller/ http://jeelabs.org/2009/07/13/my-first-reflow/ <– includes sample code http://jeelabs.org/2009/07/12/reflow-temperature/ http://jeelabs.org/2009/06/15/reflow-experimentation/
I’m still experimenting, but do intend to describe a more complete setup in the next few weeks, when some plugs come back from the PCB manufacturer – especially this one:
http://jeelabs.org/2009/08/28/thermo-plug-design/
I haven’t tried BGA yet :)