Poorman hot plate soldering.. on my kitchen stove. :P
Some photo blurring added to pcb..
wtf :( I prefluxed the board with water soluble rework flux expired 2003. Looks like the copper has a baked on residue?? I tried water. Then methyl alcohol. Zip.. MEK will probably kill the pots. Oh well...free conformal coating :P
But the soldering turned out great! No shorts or opens found yet..
Comments/questions?
D from BC
I experimented placing a pc board on a metal screen over a halogen light. That works, actually if you position the board very near the light it can melt the solder in a matter of seconds.
With techniques like you and I are using, one ought to consider the mechanical stresses on the parts resulting from uneven heating and cooling. It might be a good idea to preheat the whole assembly. I'm thinking maybe use a dimmer, heat the assembly at low power until the whole thing is at 150 C or so, then turn the power up just long enough to melt the solder, then off.
One comment Do NOT dip the damned thing, float it, and then "peel" it off the float at an angle to keep from forming icicles. Also, pre-heat the assembly in a toaster oven or such before the dip, as the shock of dipping a cold assembly is harmful to many of the parts, particularly plastic encapsulated IC chips.
The tile is a nice addition.
Accepting free hot plate donations :)
D from BC
The thermal rise and fall might be too sluggish. After preheat, there's supposed to be a 10 second 'spike' to solder. (Ref: Panasonic SMD app sheet soldering profile for chip resistors.)
On a stovetop, I could set one of the elements to preheat. However, I'm not worried about thermal stress with test boards and just skip all that.
By the way, I did try halogen soldering one time. Used a 50W reflector halogen siliconed to a metal plate. The plate did too much heat sinking :(
D from BC
??? I didn't get that part..
Yeah... the tile was all I could quickly find in the junk box. I might try warming up the tile for a preheat. Then shuffle the tile near the soldering plate. I don't like all the shuffling though :( Parts move.
D from BC
The way the corner of the board appeared to me, it looked as if you dipped the whole board into the solder.
You should only use it for the thru hole parts, and do the SMT work by hand.
:) I coated the board with flux. Applied solder paste on each pad. Moved the board onto the tile. Shuffled the board onto the hot plate for 20 seconds and then back onto the tile.
I might improve the set up with a larger metal plate with a thermal relief. This will make a preheat area on the plate.
Topview of new plate for stovetop. +-----------+ | |________+ | 245C | 150C | +--------------------+ ^thermal resistance
D from BC
I've seen a few write ups on how to convert a toaster oven into a soldering oven. The conversion usually involves adding a better temp. sensor, programmable controller and triac control of the heating elements. The homemade jobs can be set to follow a time vs temperature curve optimum for soldering jobs.
-- Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ Senior staff curmudgeon.
I tripped on that on that net.. Seems like too much work. I like my metal plate on the stove top idea. Total Cost: $1.50 Metal plate: 50 cents I think. Oven Thermometer: 1 dollar
Set up time:
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