Teensy Beats Shield

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This is absolutely awesome! Congratulations for your success!
I watched your presentation video yesterday and I wondered about how your board has been assembled. Reading through your hackaday page brings me to the conclusion that you've done that on your own with a SMT stencil from your supplier jclpcb? Could you please give a little more details and experiences about your assembly process? Did the APA102 2020 work well in the reflow process? I want to use them in a project where space matters, I can't use the easily handsolderable 5050's...
 
Could you please give a little more details and experiences about your assembly process? Did the APA102 2020 work well in the reflow process?

Thanks!

Yes, I've used a stencil from JLCPCB. I've tried a couple of different solder pastes. Both are 63/37 type. One of them was partly dried up when I received it, so that was a learning process. It should be slightly tacky and stick to the board and parts easily.

The APA102 2020s are difficult to solder if you don't have a stencil or solder mask. I wanted to test the footprint, so I made a breakout board at home and hand soldered 5 of them with hot air. Without the solder mask it's really difficult to apply the correct amount of solder paste and not have the LEDs jump around when heated. It took quite a few tries to get that board working. Once I got the stencil and PCBs it was no problem. The shield has 20 of them, and they all worked right away. Just triple check the datasheet on the correct orientation. There was some debate whether the center VCC/GND pins were required because the footprints I found did not include them. I tried without and they work fine.
 
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