Homebrew PCBs

Well, obviously experiences and opinions will vary as always.
Your method involving the two irons seems awfully complicated compared
to paste....

ST

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 11:39 PM, Adam Seychell <a_seychell@...> wrote:
>
> Do you apply a continuous trail of solder paste along each row of pads
> of a quad plat pack IC ? If so you you use a syringe to apply the paste ?.
> I found it easier to just use solder wire and dragging the iron across.
> There are many videos on the net showing this method.
>
> For all small SMD parts (resistors, caps, transistors,...) I found
> trying to apply paste to individual pads by syringe was waste of time.
> It was much easier to:
>
> 1) tin all pads using a soldering iron and 0.5mm solder wire.
>
> 2) use tweezers to lay all components on the board in approximate location.
>
> 3) apply liquid rosin flux over the whole PCB.
>
> 4) use two soldering irons to simultaneously maneuver the component and
> melt solder of each pad.
>
>
> For desoldering large ICs I use a cheap electric hot plate from a
> kitchen shop. I place layer of glass cloth followed by the PCB. I get
> the PCB to 100 ~ 150C and then hot air gun on top to desolder the IC in
> question. Lifts off in a breeze, without any collateral damage.
> Double sided heating like this is much less heat stress.
>