luni
Well-known member
I'm quite used to soldering small SMD parts on prototype boards but those QFN chips like the Teensy bootloaders are a borderline experience for me and my soldering iron. I therefore wanted to give one of those hotplates from China a try. For the fun of it I decided to build one myself and see how that works out.
I used two cheap standard heating cartridges (24V, 50W each) for 3d printers and a 24V 120W power supply. The heaters are switched by logic level MOSFETS (IRLML6344). The heating plate is a 10mm aluminum plate from the scrap box and the white posts are Teflon (PTFE) rods. The green base is 3d printed.
Here the simple schematic:
And here a video showing more information and a first soldering test using my DIY microMod T3.2 board. I used low temperature (138°C) solder paste.
All in all this first soldering experiment worked quite well. Also the bootloader was easily soldered and worked without problems. (The fiddling with the bootloader chip in the video was not really necessary, I just wanted to see if it moves back into position when touched). I designed the board with large hand-soldering pads which I assume is not so good for reflow soldering (not all parts swim into place).
Anyway, looks like this hot plate method is much more convenient and quicker than soldering with the iron. I need to practice a bit more and want to test various solder pastes. Does anyone has experience with a good (and affordable) solder paste, ideally low temp?
(EDIT: Applying the paste and placing the parts is of course heavily accelerated in the video...)
I used two cheap standard heating cartridges (24V, 50W each) for 3d printers and a 24V 120W power supply. The heaters are switched by logic level MOSFETS (IRLML6344). The heating plate is a 10mm aluminum plate from the scrap box and the white posts are Teflon (PTFE) rods. The green base is 3d printed.
Here the simple schematic:
And here a video showing more information and a first soldering test using my DIY microMod T3.2 board. I used low temperature (138°C) solder paste.
All in all this first soldering experiment worked quite well. Also the bootloader was easily soldered and worked without problems. (The fiddling with the bootloader chip in the video was not really necessary, I just wanted to see if it moves back into position when touched). I designed the board with large hand-soldering pads which I assume is not so good for reflow soldering (not all parts swim into place).
Anyway, looks like this hot plate method is much more convenient and quicker than soldering with the iron. I need to practice a bit more and want to test various solder pastes. Does anyone has experience with a good (and affordable) solder paste, ideally low temp?
(EDIT: Applying the paste and placing the parts is of course heavily accelerated in the video...)
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