Homebrew PCBs

I have a customer that uses our temperature monitoring equipment to make sure their solder paste never gets colder that 37 degrees or warmer than 45 degrees fahrenheit during storage.

Stuart


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Dylan Smith 
  To: Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 2:15 PM
  Subject: [Homebrew_PCBs] Solder paste advice


  Hi list,

  For the first time today I used solder paste. Much nicer way of soldering
  fine pitch SMD - using the soldering iron to do it was getting old rather
  fast. My method was to lay down a bead of paste on each row of pads, place
  the chip, then use a hot air gun. It was nice not to have to spend 15
  minutes carefully lining up a big LQFP then bodging it when trying to tack
  the first pin and starting again. I had read that the component will try
  and centre itself thanks to surface tension, and this turned out to be a
  good tip.

  My main problem at the moment is putting down to much paste rather than
  too little... but I had far less solder to wick up after soldering than
  doing it by hand and the result is much neater.

  The paste I got is Edsyn CR44 - it seemed reasonably easy to apply. I
  bought a syringe of the stuff.

  What's the best way of making the solder paste keep for as long as
  possible? I had heard that it had to be kept refrigerated, and that it
  would only be sent same day frieght and all this sort of thing but as far
  as I could tell, Farnell didn't treat the order any differently than any
  other component (it certainly didn't go with any priority - took 2 days to
  get to me!)



   

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