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Day of solder

A project log for Microwave Transmitter

30 - 6000 MHz synthesizer with power amplifier

peroPero 05/07/2017 at 16:210 Comments

Friday evening is fun evening for some, but soldering evening for me. In the coworking space with my beer and curious passerby I patiently sat and manually placed every single component, ruining my eyes and hurting my back. This is how the process went:

  1. Placing the stencil:
    Positioning stencil above the pcb manually is probably the most tedious work there. It is never positioned perfectly and if one side seems right, the other is most certainly wrong. In this job your best weapon is patience.
  2. Applying solder paste
    At the same time carefully, like holding a panda shaped snowflake and yet firmly, like holding the door against the horde of Orcs, you have to apply the paste. Be sure to wear the clothes you like the least.
  3. Pick'n'Place
    Meditation and life contemplation. Wining imaginary quarrels. Best jokes you'll ever think of.

  4. Burn it all
    very slowly. In my homemade solder oven. Solder process went OK, no tombstones were created but I still wasnt't really happy with the quality of the solder joints. It seems like there was not enough solder paste applied and I'm worried about quality of connections.

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