Did I mention that blue + gold is the new chique around here?
All JeeLabs boards will use a blue solder mask and gold plating from now on, which is very nice for soldering. And because I think it looks nice :)
You may have seen this already, because all recent JeePlug proto boards use that design.
To make sure that solder paste would work properly, I did a little reflow test. First a hefty dab of solder paste of varying thickness, and three 0603 resistors:
Can you spot that third resistor? Hint: it’s parallel to the lettering.
Then into the reflow grill, taken up to 250°C as required for lead-free solder:
Notice how each of the resistors aligned itself nicely, due to the capillary pull of liquid solder. And how all the solder paste ended up on the gold contacts – that’s what solder masks do: repel solder!
Here’s the other side after reflow:
Not that this matters much, since solder paste is normally only applied to pads on the top side…
but you already solder something in the jeeLink and you had good results.
I saw now that the older pads are silver :D http://jeelabs.org/2009/09/07/smd-pick-and-place/