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The PCBs

A project log for Gauss rifle v2.0

An improved version of my first gauss rifle.

pinomeleanPinomelean 02/15/2017 at 10:370 Comments

Once the PCBs arrived it was time for some soldering.

This are the components needed for each board, not including the 3mm IR photodiode, which would be added later in the build.

The missing resistor *R1* was later found out to be 100k, so add a fourth one to the list.

As i was going to populate 10 identical boards just for this project, and would probably do it again in the future, i decided to etch myself a solderpaste stencil out of an aluminium can.

It makes soldering the components much quicker than solder wire and iron. This way, the components can be placed on the solderpaste blobs without having to solder them individually.

A minute under the hot air gun, or in a reflow oven makes short work of soldering the whole board.

For this project i needed ten boards, but it can probably be scaled up by using a few more.

Using the stencil and hot air method i was able to populate all ten boards in under an hour of work.

The boards are designed to make electrical contact with busbars through the screw mounting holes. But the bare pads under the MOSFETs are there just for thermal purposes and will be isolated from the busbars with silicone pads.

In order to leave a bit of space for that pad, and to avoid rubbing of the board with the busbars on the soldermask areas (to prevent wear and shorts), i soldered small pieces of tinned copper sheet arround the mounting holes, to maintain electrical contact but lift the board a little bit from the suface it sits on.


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