Making LED stuff (not a video yet).

If you look at the last resistor that you touched with the flux after they were flowing you can see that it actually did cause it to wick up onto the resistor.

Drachnien

Yeah thought it might was gonna send you some more pcbs if you are interested let me know keep yo the great work with the videos

Ah, it'll turn up at some point. There's a lot of stuff here to get through.

Big Clive

Hi Big Clive it as a multimeter some white led pcbs some leds and I thing their was some other bits was about year ago now I think lol

I'm not sure. It was a film sold by Mega Electronics in the UK. (Their site seems to be down at the moment.) Quite expensive at the time, but it turned out to be very useful. It can create a very solid artwork from a grey one.

Big Clive

Hi Dave. It'll be hiding in my video queue. Can you remind me what you sent?

Big Clive

Is that old-fashioned lith film you have there?

Jonas Otter

hey Clive have you looked at the stuff i sent you yet lol great videos keep them coming

I bought some solder paste off eBay a while back. It came in a syringe with a selection of interchangeable nozzles. I found it very difficult to push out with the smallest nozzle, and the larger nozzles worked but tended to put out more solder than I wanted. Because it was sticky it was hard to get the small amount I wanted to stick to the board, and it would tend to lift off the board and remain stuck to the end of the syringe nozzle when I lifted it away. So if you ever do any experiments about the best way to apply solder paste, especially to really tiny parts, I'll be very interested! (In my case I was trying to replace the power button on a mobile phone, where the solder contacts were on the underside of the button so you couldn't reach them with an iron. It was by far the worst most time consuming thing I've ever soldered, in part due to the solder and the button's plastic case having a very similar melting point.)

Berkeloid

Reflow is all about surface tension. I'm not sure blobbing both pads will work in all cases, because the part won't always start in the right place. Sticky paste will help. And if your solder skim is shallow, that's better. But watch out for dry joints. A colleague got hold of some low melting point paste, gallium-based I think. He used a steam iron to reflow the board (no water lol). Then he found a hotplate on eBay and we've used it a few times at *quite hot* for reflowing teensy HVQFN33s like the LPC824. Those things got me so excited I strolled around the office like Howard Hughes saying "way of the future" a few too many times. But the hotplate works well. You can either use a low melting point paste or dial it to the datasheet preheat temperature and use a hot air pencil on each part. It's all a bit trial and error with SMT but once you get there, it's reliable enough. Just make sure the paste is fully flowed. You DO NOT want sludgy connections.

Mike Page

I think this method might not work but is worth a try. The flux is an important part of the magic. Can I suggest you apply the paste with a toothpick? Will take forever but this works.

Mike has a video about creating solder paste stencils with a craft vinyl cutter: https://youtu.be/FrxlQ2l_AHM You only get a couple of uses from a stencil cut from thin plastic like that, but it's great for one-off prototypes - I tried it out a few times a fair while before Mike made that video! ;) I bought a pack of black white plastic ID cards (as would typically be fed into a card printer) from AliExpress to use for all kinds of spreading purposes, and they work great for spreading solder paste - just let it warm to room temperature first :)

Andrew

So, was thinking, possibly you could use a 3d printer to make a mask.. hack a day had an article on it 4 years ago now... So I'm sure it's further advanced from that now - https://hackaday.com/2016/02/08/solder-stencils-with-a-3d-printer/

Steve Lemon

Wow, I've now watched so many excellent, entertaining and strangely soothing Big Clive videos that as I read the text above it was his dulcet tones I heard in my head! Bring on the soldering en-masse experiment, but will this be the beginning of the end as BC moves from artisan to mass producer?

Hi Clive, while you’re adjusting your items for sale on your web site, could you please add the file from your first SMD project, ( the square coaster pcb) for download. Always great work mate. Thanks

Mike Wynne

"Oh please, yes; yes, please sir! We would like new stuff!" – Oliver

I want to see this! Woo!

Michael Thompson

I should put the bonsai kit up. I do still have a shop on my website with various kits, but should refresh it and add new stuff.

Big Clive

Have you given any thought to selling PCB kits again, including the bonsai tree design ? I would gladly pre order and pay upfront for some beefy solder pad kits due to my clumsy sausage fingered attempts with some of the kits procured from our Asian brethren.

Looking good Clive, I would test them out in my workshop, see how they perform under work conditions, 😂 comparing them to the ones I’ve already got

Mike

Sir you are a tease! Fully expected a video. Looking forward to see the results soon.

Neil Tonks