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Soldering with a Toaster Oven
nullset sent in a link to the Seattle Robotics Society about soldering in an unconventional way. Instead of the traditional soldering iron, Kenneth Maxon has successfully used a toaster oven to solder surface mount parts. The "magic ingredient" that facilitates this is a water-soluble solder paste. I wish I'd thought of this back when I had to solder one of those *ahem* aftermarket accessories to my playstation, since the whole process looks easier than trying to hold a soldering iron steady.
Your motherboard has finished. Don't forget to ground it properly!
already
haha...using microwaves to cure cancer?
I hope you're happy, putting your local video game stores out of business, you thief.
--sdem
Pentium motherboard in Pentium 4 motherboard out.
Seems simple enough, where can I buy one?
What isnt a toaster good for?
(I regretfully ask)
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
You did it! Way to go, man! You get the love!
I have read about this on another web site before. Its not a new technique, I have even thought of trying it before, except I dont have a toaster oven.
-Brandon
Quitters never win, Winners never quit, But those who never win and never quit are idiots.
I've never seen a toster overn big enough for a Playstation. I could just see someone putting the whole Playstation/XBOX in the oven which often defaults to 350F. 30 minutes later melted XBOX Pie
Some already use solder paste when fitting mod chips to consoles. You can dip the wire into it and give it a quick blast of heat while pressing the wire against the connection point.
soldering in an unconventional way
sorry but industry has been doing the solderpaste->heated oven dance for years now.
it's unconventional to use a hand held iron unless you are doing board rework.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
'Have you seen my new soldering Iron?'
Kenneth Maxon
Here some month's back I heard from a guy who knew a guy who knew how to solder surface mount parts using his toaster oven. Being quite a bit of a skeptic, a guy who knows a guy is a bit of a reach for me and I tossed the idea out as ridiculous.
Today I'm here to share with you, my own first hand experiences in using a toaster oven to put down fine pitch surface mount parts. I owe great thanks to Mark C. and his friend Dana O. who introduced me to the technology and to Jeff B and Jim C for helping work through the learning phase.
It is the intention of the author to present a pictorial documentation of the process with this article and hopefully pass along the Art. I hope that other members of the Seattle Robotics Society (and beyond) will pick up this skill and add it to their toolbox in dealing with board design and stuffing in the future.
The process starts with the use of a 'Magic Ingredient', a water-soluble solder paste. This 'Magic Ingredient' is available though DigiKey and is made by Kester Solders. Buying of the product in itself is interesting as it must be kept refrigerated and will only be delivered if ordered for overnight delivery. Since the material is water based it must be stored in a cold place (refrigerator) and only 'keeps' for a few months.
Starting with a clean board, the solder paste is applied from the syringe. The paste comes pre-loaded into a syringe however, the reader must order the plunger for the syringe and the applicator tips separately. I found it easiest to hold the syringe with my left hand depressing the plunger with my thumb, while slowly pulling the board along underneath with my right hand. My first try came, only after watching several successful tries by Mark who seemed to be a natural! The two photos below show the application of solder past to two different PCB's. One with a high-density fine pitch surface mount part and the other with 0.050" pitch surface mount parts.
When applying paste to 0.050" pitch (and above) boards, dab paste onto each individual pad Vs fine pitch where a bead of past is laid down across all the pads.
So, how much paste should the reader use for their board? As this is very much an art I'd suggest try it and see. The part can always be removed and re-applied. (More on that later) The following photograph shows the amount of solder paste used on the author's board. One step not shown is the first attempt to smoothly lay down a bead of paste which 'clumped' and 'gooped' all over the place. A damp paper towel from the kitchen quickly removed the mess and left the board clean and ready for a second try.
The next step in the process involves placing the parts. This is not as critical as it may seem. The reader can appreciate the surprise we went through when learning that in the re-flow process, the part will partially center itself over the pads on the PCB. This is due to the surface tension of each little bubble of solder under each of the 132 pins in our fine pitch part. Knowing this, the author still spent an extra few minutes making sure that the processor lined up exactly with the pads below it. The photos below depict the parts placement process. Notice the use of tweezers to place small surface mount parts, while fingers seemed the ultimate tool for the larger microprocessor parts.
The next picture shows the 'mess' left by all that solder paste squished between the hundreds of little surface mount pins.
Off to the oven with you! The next step in the process is to cook the boards. We used a toaster oven that the landlady of the author was kind enough to donate to the project. There is nothing special about this oven, a plain old proctor-silex from target will suffice for the job at hand. Looking to industry for answers, Mark tracked down a thermal profile used when infrared re-flow is done commercially. Matching closely with the author's own experiences in dealing with board stuffing houses we reached our own mod
Lam0r.
Mirror here. don't be surprised if all the images aren't on it yet...getting 900bytes/sec here folks.
Hold a knife over the flame of a gas stove. That is how a real man solders! Well, don't solder anything other than a speaker connecter!
First we had solid solder, cool. Then we had rosin-core solder for electronics, cooler. Then we had tabs of solder that could be melted with a lighter, lame. Now we have a toaster that can be used to solder, which is theoreticaly cool but realistically lame.
Wouldn't this paste have a higher resistance than the solder we know and love? Couln't a soldering iron be used to heat it with greater efficiency? Does it have any use outside of SMD?
Maybe I'm just weird, but I won't part with my soldering iron any time soon. SMD may be cool, but it doesn't have the "cobbled togethor" look of a traditionally etched and soldered circuit.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Finally, something I submit gets posted....after all these years and hundreds....err well 12 total submissions :)
--buddy
Prehaps its time to bring back that old favourite Acts of Gord who really is a small game shop owner
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I'm thinking that's what makes this work.
I wonder if this could be adapted for mass production? Not having to individually solder pins would have to speed things up. The error rate is a little high for production, but I'm sure it could be improved with a little engineering.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Isn't this the same place we read about the person who put his PDA in the oven to dry it?
Solder melts at around 350 degrees, the maximum storage temperature for ICs is around 140 degrees F, and 200 for mil spec chips. Heating the whole board and components to 350 for long enough for the solder to melt will destroy the chips.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Learn something new every day.
So does this mean that if I use this process for my MB and put a notoriously hot AMD chip in it, it'll re-melt the paste?
"No, seriously guys, my computer is bleeding to death."
-Valiss
here and here
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
already /.'ed
I wonder if he's trying to solder with his server now...
Karma. Moderation. Is my
How about having kids with only two eyes?
Well, soldering in hovens is by no means an unconventional way. Nowdays components are in BGA packages (ball grid arrays), which are matrices of solder balls under the package (see image). Those baybies can be soldered ONLY in an hoven. Same goes to the chipset of the motherboard of the computer you're using right now, unless it's a rather old one. So those guys apply the indutry standard to an amateur project. You can note that the things they solder could also be soldered with a soldering iron. Soldering a BGA that way can be more problematic, but that would kick ass! (usually BGA comes with multi-layer printed circuit board (PCB), so you wouldn't be able to go outside the professional circuit anyway).
We returned to the kitchen to find the heating element was an unwholesome shade of orange, and the chips were already black.
An oven mit, a concrete floor, and half a box of baking soda later, the flames were extenguished.
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:okXVGJjYnsAC: www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/200006/oven_art.ht m+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
i know this is redundant but even the cache was slow to load, so here it is
Forget this guy's server being slashdotted, I am having major problems surfing around Slashdot itself *gasp* Anybody else having similar problems (internal server errors appear)? Sorry about being a bit off topic, but its worrying me. It seems to be ok for right now, but it also happened yesterday...I couldnt access the main page.
Seattle Robotics has had information on using toaster ovens for SMT soldering for quite some time. I recall viewing their info more than a year ago.
Possibly the best thing since sliced bread?
This process is basically how many printed circuits are made in industry. Do a Google search for "reflow soldering".
The trick is temperature control. Heated air and Infrared heaters are often used
Why burn ants when you can put that magnifying glass to good use soldering circuits together in the summer sun? ;-)
Seriously though, wouldn't it be cool if someone modified a laser-pen (or appropriately set up fibre-optic light source) to serve as a soldering iron?
No more fumbling with hot-metal iron pens. Shutter the light and it's cold!
--The more you know, the less you know.
Talking about Iron Chef by FujiTV?
When in doubt, mod as "interesting..."
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
Since installing the "accessory", I've bought maybe five or six import games from my local import game store. This import game store charges an arm and a leg for those rare games.
If not for my "accessory", I would be patronizing Software Etc. and similar chains.
I don't want to play Quake 2 on my Dreamcast; I want to play Guilty Gear X, or Shenmue II, or Capcom vs. SNK 2. To do that, you need to be a criminal.
Instead of the traditional soldering iron, Kenneth Maxon has successfully used a toaster oven to solder surface mount parts.
We.., *I* can solder SMPs with a *blow drier*. Ergo, I rule.
Mom: Kids, dinner's ready! Kids: Oh boy mom! Whatcha got cookin in the oven? Mom: You're favorite... home made, roasted to perfection Intel chips (Pentiyumms?)
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Is all I need to solder SMD's.
They can just put their site on slashdot, and let their overheated server sauter for them.
~ kjrose
This reminds me of the possibly hypocriphal story about a chip maker that noticed the contamination rate on their chips seemed to spike once a week, usually on monday. It wasn't until an engineer stopped in on a weekend and discovered that the cleaning crew was using the oven they baked the silicon wafers in to cook pizza. The fact that they didn't discover this cause there were no engineers in on the weekend makes me think it might be made up, but repeat anything enough and it becomes true!
Now my girlfriend can finally cook me something I will like ...
... If I had a girlfriend! Thanks for reminding me how big of a nerd I am.
Lead sintered pop-tarts. (I hope this toster isn't used for food henceforth)
This was discuessed on piclist shortly after oven soldering came up. The conclusion was you would need a laser that costs many thousands of dollars to get the wattage necessary to solder with.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I have to confess I'm amazed to see someone use something as commonplace as a toaster oven to do the work of >$60,000 reflow ovens ;-) I'm an engineer in charge of a surface mount line, and there are a few interesting issues to consider when trying such techniques, the biggest of which is "ramp and soak" which in a nutshell is how hot a component gets over a given amount of time. When soldering SMT components, it is imperative that a component recieves no more than 2 degrees C (about 3 degrees F) a second ramp-up in temperature. This is to prevent thermal shock and damage to the components. It is OK for a component to be exposed to soldering temperatures, ideally for as little as possible; a few seconds. When you solder a component in an oven the way this article describes, you run a risk of damaging sensitive components. Passive components like SMT resistors, coils, and simple IC's like logic gates generally take the punishment a lot better than film capacitors, PROM's, etc. Of course, just for foolin' around in the garage, the toaster oven method should be ok, likely you'll not fry the component if you don't leave it in there longer than you have to.
;-)
SMT reflow ovens, essentially, are identical to the ovens used in Pizza Hut where they stick a pizza in one end and it is taken through heating zones via a conveyor and pops out the other side done. In SMT reflow, the zones are controlled in such a manner that the holy 2 degrees C rule is never broken. (I used to joke that on the day I get fired, I was going to stick a frozen pizza in our reflow oven just to see what'd happen.)
My method of soldering IC's to a board is simple and IPC approved: Place the IC on the pads; center it up as well as you can. Using a regular soldering iron, "tack" two opposing corners of the IC to the lands with conventional solder. Don't worry about bridging. Then, apply a small amount of liquid solder flux to one side of the IC, bathing the legs. Then, apply a small bead of solder to the end of you iron and GENTLY wipe this bead across all the legs, from pin one to pin whatever. (Yes, it's counter-intuitative,) and you'll see as if by magic that you'll get very few solder bridges. Apply more flux if required. Clean tip of iron completely of solder, and just touch it to solder bridges. The excess solder will "sweat" to the iron. Clean iron tip again and repeat. When done, clean flux with laquer thinner or similar substance. (If you use no-clean flux, you could just be gross and leave it there if you wished, removing excess with a paper towel.) I find that a simple toothbrush dipped in thinner does wonders.
Or, you can stick stuff in your wife's toaster and take chances that way
Take care now ~!
(shows some truly awesome burn scars)
c'est la guerre
I've soldered toast to mine multiple times.
Dreamt I was an eskimo.. du duu duu boo bo. Wearing my boot around my toe. Stepping the ground below. It was a hundred degrees below zero. And my babe cried. Don't be an eskimo. Say your money don't go to the show. Well I turned around and I said wou ho! And the northern lights they shone. Bo Boo woo hoo! Right about that time people, a deathtrap who was strictly a commercial. Strictly commercial. Yellow yellow taxi behind my igloo. A man standing behind me with his snow shoes. Pick a boo, pick a boo! Let me rain with your snow shoes! He was the meanest eskimo any eskimo boy can be. The deadly yellow snow right from that husky flow... People from this area. The circular moment. It's a rabbit! It's a rabbit! Temporarily! Well a death trap stood there trying to figure out what to do with his itching eyes! If anything bad anything ever happens it's a tundra that's shouting! Temporarily! Temporarily! It was that precise moment when I remembered that ancient eskimo lore. If anyones name is Nanok the only way we can escape is to shoot a capsule out to the skies!
Slashdotted after 1 post? Oh, my! I guess they're serving the site off a toaster, too. ;)
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
http://www.johnytech.com/sdm/oven_art.html
I Encrypt My IM's
They can just melt the solder with the heat coming off their webserver...
I'm too lazy to think of anything to put here.
Do you happen to have a pointer to the archives of that discussion handy? I'm interested in reading them.
:-)
Looking at the R500 Solder Paste specs the peak temperature shown is 225C (437F). Paper burns at 233C (451F) and a magnifying glass can burn paper easily on a sunny day, so I would at least expect the magnifying glass approach to work.
--The more you know, the less you know.
Back in the day when I was cutting my teeth at a contract manufacturer, we used a toaster oven, an I/O card and an 8086 to do reflow soldering. That was back when the majority of components were still had leads and we only did limited runs of SMT parts. We couldn't afford a real reflow oven for a while. We used and abused that oven for years then actually SOLD the thing.
A reflow oven is just a fancy pizza oven. It has a conveyor belt and different zones so you can controll the time/temperature profile of the board as the solder starts to flow (tuning this is an art). I went to Nepcon one year (a electronics manufacturing trade show) and a company had some blonde eye candy making chocolate chip cookies in their top of the line reflow oven. It was obviously virgin equipment...the oven that is.
Some of you mentioned using light to solder...this is quite common now. White light actually works better than lasers believe it or not. The broad band spectral content transfers more energy to the solder.
the flux. it's all in the flux.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
As other posters have indicated, reflowing solder paste in a toaster oven has been done for years and simulates the standard process for SMT assembly.
Using Solder Paste, you can use a hot air gun to place components on a PCB as well. A woman I know at work (Celestica) made a video demonstrating the SMT solder process using a hot air gun - it came out quite nicely and her joke on customers was saying that she followed the board through the oven (it was vapor phase at the time). Many customers were impressed with her tolerance to extreme heat.
As somebody noted, most components will stop working at 140C and in the oven they will go over 200C - they will survive, but the PCB should not be powered up until the PCB has cooled to room temperature.
If you're going to try this at home, a few comments:
1. Solder paste will only stay reliably sticky for 30 minutes. Make sure that you have your components ready and the oven at the primary temperature before you break the seals on the syringe and start applying paste. Make sure that you don't have more components than you can place in 20 minutes.
2. Solder "paste" is made up of finely ground solder held together by flux. Both the solder and the flux are poisenous and during the solder process you will see a build up of flux on the inside of the oven. Along with this, the solder may form "balls" that can be thrown off the PCB. An oven used for SMT experiments cannot be used for food preparation afterwards.
3. Solder paste must be capped and refridgerated when not in use. If you are storing it in a fridge where food is stored, make sure that it is in something like a tupperwear container and well marked (especially if children are around). It looks like pate or liverwurst, but will sit in your stomach like a ball of lead (sorry, couldn't resist).
4. The PCB coming out of the oven is very hot and will take several minutes to cool down. I've heard of a number of people that have built SMT boards in a toaster oven, only to forget oven mitts and tongs to handle the hot PCBs and ended up dropping the PCB on the floor and burning themselves. One genius I heard about was sitting down when he pulled the board out of the oven without any mitts or tongs... Make sure you have something like a barbeque grill ready for the PCB to sit on when it comes out of the over.
5. The PCB should be as dry as possible. Before putting on paste/components, you might want to put it into the over for a day or so at the lowest setting to try and bake out any water that has gotten trapped in it. Let the PCB cool before applying paste.
6. The PCB pads should be "HASL" ("Hot Air Solder Leveled") for best results (do not try this on bare copper and you may have to experiment with gold finishes).
7. I would suggest using parts with leads on 0.050" (50 mil) centers, 0805 chip components and SOT-23 transistor and diodes. Anything smaller will make applying the solder very difficult. The article indicates the author used smaller spacing components, but not how many and how the PCB was laid out.
8. Do not use surface mount connectors. Unless you are very comfortable with doing your own soldering, you will find that it is difficult to get a uniformly strong joint on every pin.
9. If you are designing your own PCB, you can use Protel's "EasyTrax", which is an MS-DOS Command Line program that can be downloaded for free from a variety of sources (you should be able to find where on Google). I have added IPC standard pad layouts for the library components.
I've done it a couple of times with an old toaster oven and it works surprisingly well. Just make sure you plan out what you are going to do and if there are any terms that I have used above that you are unfamilia with, make sure that you investigate them before trying it out on your own.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
and port linux to it. After all a Siplace 80f series can be gotten cheap...Except no hardware or software support:P [man, that RMS dude was right!]
Yes it would be cool to get watts worth of heat from a milliwatt source.
No more fumbling with hot-metal iron pens. Shutter the light and it's cold!
That's true! When your eyes quit steaming, you'll quickly tire of soldering things by sense of touch and smell.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
How long till someone thinks, "Hey, it took 30 mins in the toaster oven. I can to it in 3 mins in my microwave!"
When was the last time that CowboyNeal actually posted 4 stories in a row? Is everyone else out drinking already?
I tell you, the world's gone mad.
You've got two things going for you when you burn paper with a magnifying glass that you don't have while heating a chip lead. Paper combusts spontaniously, and paper is a poor conductor of heat compared to copper, tin, and lead. This means that you can heat a tiny spot on a piece of paper to over 400F more easily than a spot of copper because the energy you're putting into the paper isn't being carried away so fast, and that you only have to set a tiny spot of paper on fire for the whole sheet to burn. My guess would be that your magnifying glass wouldn't be able to heat a chip lead up that much because the heat would get carried elsewhere almost as quickly as you were putting it in, and even if it didn't, you'd have to pump a lot more heat into the chip lead since it's got to be completely heated to get the job done instead of having just a tiny spot heated.
...out to see a movie.
Didn't have to pay to get it in!
Fish heads, fish heads!
Rolly, polly fish heads.
Fish heads, fish heads!
Eat 'em up, Yum!
-5 offtopic
unfortunately, there ain't no hand reworking them. you gotta get the right tools.
I bet the Iraqi people can drag this war out for months. You tanks are going to have a tough time.
I was pretty disappointed. There were tons of solder bridges (where the solder connects two pins together), some pins that didn't stick reliably, etc. I wound up spending as much effor cleaning up as I would have doing it by hand in the first place. If I was going to try it again, I might make a solder mask to apply the paste only on the pads, instead of running a thin line across the pads as they recommended.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Years ago I used a Wagner heat gun to unsolder unneeded 40 pin dips from circuit boards. I was already using the gun to remove the "protective" epoxy so it was convienient. I've also used a shrink wrap gun (much milder than the Wagner) to reflow solder on dimms that had cold solder joints.
Deuteronomy 13:06-9
Interesting discussion happening here, thanks.
So trying to heat it directly wouldn't work because heat gets sucked into the lead too quickly...
Sounds like you would have to use a hybrid approach. Heat the tip of something non-heat-conducting and touch that tip to the lead you're soldering. You would probably have to do this repetitively, in a pulsed manner - the tip acts as a small heat capacitor (for lack of a better word) that you're heating and cooling.
Hmmm... I wonder if one could design a heat pump like a charge/voltage pump.?. Think Taser mechanism with a diode/capacitor chain, only using optically-generated heat and TiNi alloy mechanical switching.
--The more you know, the less you know.
Google Cache.
...that you're comparing legitimate competition with outright theft? Last I checked, downloading a "backup" and burning it on CD to play in your chipped PS was still stealing.
--sdem
Maybe this is what the Baked Apple person was trying to do.
It would be nice if the author (or submitter) could supply the slashdot community with the Digikey Part numbers?
If it was just the solder, it would be one thing. But the page mentions tips, etc needed.
Thanks
putting your local video game stores out of business, you thief.
Your assumption, that mod chips are useful only for playing infringing copies of proprietary game software, is not valid. Mod chips and similar console accessories are useful for developing homebrew software; when marketed solely for that purpose, they do not violate the DMCA. The shops that have busted for selling mod chips either 1) advertised them as useful for playing "backups" or 2) did not bundle the mod chips with a copy of a development tool such as GCC.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There is a mirror of this site on Freenet at SSK@sH9n3yDlq1QhP5qhxcu7J6qQcG4PAgM/solder// This link will only work if you are running Freenet.
The more you download it the faster the mirror will be for everyone. Please download from a distribution node instead of the main site if possible to ensure a healthy network. If you are running a distribution node, please reply to this comment with the URL.
i hope that toasters used in this manner get retired from toasting food products.
but some of us are big into application development for the ps2 and that requires a mod chip.
It requires either an independently produced mod chip, or the official PS2 mod chip produced by Sony.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is a dumb way to try to fix a surface mount board. Who cares if it's perfect like it came out of the factory?
This idea could distroy your board.
A better idea:
Glue said chip on to board with epoxy.
Use conducive silver ink pen to solder the contacts cold...
No heat required works everytime...
Uh, solder is generaly really reflective. I shudder at the thought of what the laser would do AFTER it bounces off of a blob of molten solder into various interesting directions around the room...
also works well for reflow of components. For rework purposes, use aluminium muffler tape to screen off the rest of the area around the component you are heating up. My recipe to remove a large chip: 1 minute at 2 inches to preheat 1 minute at 1/2 inch to reflow Flip chip off with an ice pick
Heat the tip of something non-heat-conducting and touch that tip to the lead you're soldering.
This is a very interesting idea! Perhaps you could have this tool, instead of being heated by the sun going through a magnifying lens, heated by electrical power from a wall socket!
Then you could just touch this tool to the object to be soldered and it would heat it up and solder would melt and stick to it!
Wow! GENIUS.
Good, leave the ants alone. [grin] :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Perhaps...
Specs sheet sez "leaves bright/shiny solder joints after reflow", which begs the question how does the powder refract/absorb light before reflow? Powders tend to exhibit different optic properties from their more macroscopic solid equivalents.
In any case, it could serve as a simple automated trigger mechanism. Stop applying heat/light when it "gets shiny"...
--The more you know, the less you know.
THAT SAID, WHAT IS IT ABOUT SOLDERING THAT STRIKES FEAR INTO PEOPLE???
I wish I'd thought of this back when I had to solder one of those *ahem* aftermarket accessories to my playstation, since the whole process looks easier than trying to hold a soldering iron steady.
This technique isn't a substitute for learning to use a soldering iron. It's just not. "Maybe if I do this complicated, tricky thing with a toaster oven, I won't have to use (shudder) a soldering iron!!!"
Just to get things straight here, a few things I've had to explain to people in the last year or so:
Reflow with a toaster oven will not substitute for learning to solder.
Conductive epoxy will not substitute for learning to solder. (it's for making connections to things you can't solder, and is more difficult to work with than solder)
"Solderless breadboards" will not substitute for learning to solder.
Buying lots of alligator clip jumpers is no substitute for learning to solder, either.
Conductive pens will not substitute for making circuit boards
Am I leaving anything out?
Or... you could use microwaves, push it down a length of good quality co-ax and into a load mounted inside a soldering tip...
Of course you can buy thoes, damn useful things instant constnat controllable power, out of my price range.
Heh. The point I was getting at with this train of thought was that you wouldn't have to heat a huge stick of metal. You could make it AA-battery powered instead of wall-powered, and it wouldn't have to contain volatile fuels like butane to make it portable.
;-)
When you're done with it you wouldn't have to wait long for it to cool down before putting it back in a tool-kit or pocket.
Ah well, it was just an idea. Do with it what you wish; it's in the public domain now.
--The more you know, the less you know.
Just in case someone wants to do it the hand-soldered way:
SMT assembly techniques
What's IPC?
1) Go to Google.
2) In the search box enter "IPC" then a space, then "solder" (without the quotes).
3) Click the "Google Search" button.
4) Look at the first entry.
5) Figure it out from there and report back to us.
6) In your report, show your work.
7) No, I won't provide a link. You must do the work yourself in order to learn.
...they've also figured out a way to make toast with a soldering iron.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
the ToAsT0r?
A SMT workstation would be sweet to have, but the $800+ price tag puts it a bit out of the reach of the average hobbiest.
It's been a while since I looked at the prices, but since the stations are sold primarily to businesses with deep pockets, I can't imagine that they are much cheaper today.
Pinball, arcade video, tech and more: www.micsaund.com
Yeah but where's the CHALLENGE? That just takes all the fun out of garage tinkering, trying to solder components onto perfboards without burning up a) the components and b) your fingers.
SMD may be the future, but it's for weenies...
FWIW, I have a thin 8 1/2 x 11" fresnel that can easily melt a lump of regular solder (then turn it into a wierd yellowish powdery-crystally thing)
iirc, you can also use it to peel traces off of circuit boards. (it also melts sand, ashes, chars wood instantly...)
We used to melt blobs (BIG blobs) of solder using a fresnel lens a guy here had bought from a homeware shop. The lens was marketed as "making a small TV look like a big TV" or somesuch (with no mention at all of the pixelation and distortion that made viewing it unbearable). We could focus the size of the lens (about 20" square), down to much less than 1".
1 sqm of sunlight here in the subtropics is more than 1000W, so we were focussing maybe 300W into an area less then 1 square inch. Needless to say, it was easily hot enough to melt the solder. It was very uncontrolled, though.
...I've put up a mirror (with optimized images) here.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Now you can solder anything you want with your new toaster oven.
hypocriphal = apocryphal + hypocritical? I know I'm gonna use it!
RF inductive heated soldering irons like Metcal's use much lower frequencies than microwaves, somewhere in the range of 10-15 Mhz IIRC.
But yeah, they're damned useful, and affordably available on ebay.
Don't forget the episode where Homer tried to repair the toaster and winds up turning it into a time machine.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Take e.g. CO2 lasers. They are cheap, can relatively easy be made at home (http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasersam.htm) and at the wavelength of about 10um, nearly nothing is that reflective.
This technique is only really suitable for special case surface mount soldering.
If you're not using surface mount components (like mod chips) you're going to have to use a soldering iron anyway.
The key to making any iron work easy (even surface mount!) is to use plenty of flux.
Get a seperate container of just flux and don't be afraid to use it. It makes a WORLD of difference.
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
I was using a hot air gun to solder and unsolder surface-mount components back in the early 1980's probably before most slashdotters were born.
It really doesn't matter what the source is: you still have to put X joules of heat into the metal to raise its temperature Y degrees. I doubt you could get enough energy out of a couple of AA cells to do much more than a solder joint or two.
Yeah, but just try debugging or modding SMD stuff. It's practically impossible.
I personally miss the the gradual disappearing of through-hole work, because I could debug it and fix/mod it. Can't do anything interesting with SMD.
I'm glad I wasn't convinced of that before I tried my first hobby SMD design project. SMD boards are great -- you can hand-solder chips with 0.65mm lead pitch without too much grief, and unlike most garden-variety through-hole PCBs, you have access to every component and connection from the top of the board. For RF work, SMD combines the convenience and tweakability of dead-bug construction with the professionalism and neatness of PCBs.
It probably won't be too long before many types of chips and discrete components are available only in SMD. The more interesting RF chips are already unavailable in DIP packages. This is one of those generational changes, like the transition from vacuum tubes to solid-state technology, that you'll just have to deal with if you want to stay current in the hobby.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
http://www.computronics.com.au/pdr/
They are more akin to this toaster oven then a pinpoint source though.
Buy your soildering iron toaster ovens at good will! Not only does the money go to helping the poor, but you are helping keep usable appliances out of our landfills! Besides, with all the nasty stuff in the water based soldier, i doubt you'd want to cook with it afterwards. If you mod me up, mod me as informative, not funny; I'm being serious here, help out your local charity.
moox. for a new generation.
hehehe...
:)
:)
yeah, its kinda nice isn't it? im 2 for 3 so far... but i think submitting AC is a point against myself.
but anyway, there are a few good points to remember when submitting a story:
-is it geeky? if not, is it nerdy?
-is it stuff that matters? (doesn't really matter it seems)
-does it run, or is powered by Linux? Or OS X?
-is it a new distro? a new Mozilla release?
-does it show how M$ pressures the world to play by their misguided rules?
-does it have the world "script kiddie" in it?
-is it a cool use of something ordinary, like say a toaster oven?
-has someone discovered a new star? solar system? galaxy? umm, universe?
-does it "discuss" how the RIAA is hurting themselves? how we can beat them?
-does it "discuss" how spam is hurting us? how we can fight back?
-is it about a new graphics card? or CPU?
-is it a new palm pilot or similar?
-is it wireless?
-are you asking slashdot about about your disgruntled situation at work?
-will it help your fellow nerds/geeks get a date?
-does it get you faster access to pr0n?
-have you really found a way to make your penis bigger?
-are you asking someone to marry you? (that was a classic btw, taco
but the real winner is a story that's so good that it gets posted TWICE!!! (taco's just classic isn't he?
There're in Silicon Valley.
If you need a quick design to a full working (with components) board, these guys do some pretty good work!
Turn around times for even multi-layer boards are fast. But then again, if your in the hardware business, and in SV, you probably know about these guys... anyway, my $0.02.
Atleast tell them your interesed in working with them, and get them to show you around their facility, interesting stuff.
It works fine on surface mounted stuff with paste
solder, even large items.
Back in the '60s (or maybe the early '70s) I saw a board for a high-end processor that used a related trick. (I think it was by Seymour Cray when he was still working for Control Data.)
The board had some hysterical number of layers (for the time), like in the 30s or 40s. And it was literally paved with 14- and/or 16-pin DIPs. On BOTH sides.
Now this was a problem, because DIPs have feet that go through holes and are mormally soldered on the OPPOSITE side of the board. To get maximum density the DIPs had to be laid out so that the pins of the DIPs on ONE side come up under the middle of the DIPs on the OTHER side. If you stuff one side you can get to the legs of the DIPs to solder them. But how do you solder down the legs of the dips from the other side? (It doesn't help to stuff 'em both at the same time, because then you can't get to EITHER side.)
The solution was to start by soldering down the first side's worth of DIPs with ordinary-temperature solder, as usual. Then they put little donuts of low-temperature solder with flux paste around each leg of each second-side DIP, insert them, and heat the whole assembly to a temperature that would melt the low-temp but not the high-temp solder.
Of course you had to bring all the legs to be soldered and the through-holes up to soldering temperature and back down in a few seconds. Otherwise you'd cook the chips and/or destroy the multilayer board (wich was DREADFULLY expensive). That's a very short time to heat and cool the parts to a very carefully controlled temperature. Too high and you unsolder the first layer of chips, too low and you get bad joints among the tens of thousands of chip legs.
So they dunked 'em in hot vegetable oil, with a carefully controlled temperature and dunk duration.
Think "deep fryer".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
(I think it was by Seymour Cray when he was still working for Control Data.)
Now that I think about it, if it was Cray and integrated circuits, it would have been AFTER he left Control Data. He first used integrated circuits in the Cray I.
He used discrete components before that, because in those days the speed advantage of discrete transistors and lower-resistance wiring sped up the logic more than the wider spacing of the parts slowed it down, so he could make faster machines that way. The crossover point was reached for TTL about the time he started his own company.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Once the solder has melted the oven is tapped a few times..."
Shake-and-bake?
A) Consumer-class lasers are rated less than 5 milliwatts. You'd be MUCH better off just short circuiting the battery.
B)Even so, all the light in a laser is focused on that one point. Already. That's why it is so special. A magnifying glass would just mess the straight beam of light it up. It works by focusing a large area of light on a small area.
(Aside: a Joule is a Newton-meter.) What you're saying would be true for a regular soldering iron where you're wasting energy heating several grams of metal (and keeping it hot all the time) when the business end is only a few mm^2 surface area. We're going to have to wait for compact fuel cell technology to come out before that becomes practical.
What I am suggesting is an active delivery mechanism, so the heating only needs to happen on a few milligrams of heatable metal or other contact material. You're reducing the total volume of metal being heated so you don't need as much energy to get it to the same temperature.
I agree that a regular AA cell probably wouldn't be able to deliver the deep-discharge currents you would need to heat things up in a reasonable amount of time. You would have to use something like a supercapacitor to buffer the charge-discharge cycles. For manual soldering work, you only need to deliver heat to the point of contact for a short period of time relative to total on-time.
More experimentation is needed. No numbers were harmed in this qualitative thought process, just orders of magnitude.
--The more you know, the less you know.
Judgemental piece of shit.
This technique is actually being promoted by a great hobby PCB manufacturer. The company pcbexpress (http://www.pcbexpress.com/stencils/index.php) will make a stencil for your custom board. Then you use a squegee to apply the solder paste to all the pads, palce the parts, and then bake! Wha La! Easy SMD soldering. The only problem is if you have parts on both sides, when you back one side, the parts will fall off the other :( It's quite hard cleaning up all those tiny capacitors off the bottom of your toaster over.
I knew I had it somewhere around here...
http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/toasterpc/
Probably written above, but is this a new use for a couple OC'ed Athlons?
Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
did it one time with a cast iron skillet after about 15 minutes sitting on low heat. Got the idea from a Circuit Cellar Ink coulmn several years ago.
What's the best way to *remove* SMT devices without a hot air station?
...before someone works out how to solder using an iron.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
That is some funny shit! Prolly just me though.
Thx.
maybe this is what the lady who cooked an iBook (as reported a few months ago) had in mind...
There's nothing interesting or novel about this article. Reflow is a time-honored method of soldering surface mount parts. The fact that a toaster oven was used simply shows the lacks of elegance and attention to detail, as reflow mounting requires strict temperature controls to prevent damaging the parts and the PCB.
Real men don't use perfboards.
Just stand those vacuum tubes up on the lab bench and solder the wires right on to the pins.
piclist.com, then go to the archives. You have to register to get access though. Look for some messages about hot air soldering and follow the long thread. It's an interesting read in any case.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Isn't this what they use to circumvent security in a jiffy and get into a room? WOW! Talk about security technology in the future, we have it right now.
Yep. It's just you.
I wouldn't trust a toaster oven to have a reliable heat setting. If the temperature isn't supposed to go over a set level, then you better have a damn good oven.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
First time I had seen this technique used was in 1994 when I was working for a medium sized subcontract assembly shop in Markham, Ontario.
The SMT pick and place machine was already installed and running. The owner wanted to start up a small run of a few 10s of boards before I was able to commision the Second hand SMT reflow oven he had purchased.
I decided that I wouldn't use the toaster oven to warm up my lunch after that.
The reflow oven's control system was a PC running windows 3.1. One could play minesweeper or solitaire while waiting for the boards to come out the other end when fine tuning a profile.