Hey All!

I hope that this Friday the 13th has been kind to you all, it has for
me...so far anyway.

I just wanted to give you an update to an issue that I had a while back. I
don't know
if you remember the board that had the two 20-oz copper layers that I was
going to
try and wave solder...well, I wasn't very successful.

The board was double-sided SMT, and I did a double-sided reflow for all the
SMT.
The bottomside was pretty dense, had some layout issues, and I thought that
it would
be best to double side reflow and get a selective wave solder fixture for
the through-hole
which was pretty minimal. Just a few DIP IC's, some headers, and a
right-angle connector.
The right-angle connector had quite a few pins, and that's why I considered
the selective
wave solder fixture.

I pre-heated the board at 125 C. in an oven for 30-minutes, quickly removed
it and placed
it inside the fixture, manually fluxed everything from the topside with
liquid flux, and sent it
on it's merry way down the wave. I thought I was doing okay at first when
it hit the wave,
because I started to see solder coming up to the topside of the board on
the connector
pins, but then it stopped.

Take a look at; "Flooded Board" at http://www.stevezeva.homestead.com

Before you go "Holy Cr@p Batman!", that was a scrap board...I might be
dumb, but I ain't
idiot. I wasn't gonna try something like that for the first time with a
production board!

Turns out that the fixture just couldn't take it. It was made of Durapol
and when it started going
across the wave, there wasn't enough material to keep it from warping and
bowing away from
the board...I've learned some valuable lessons from this. I spent a pretty
good amount of money
on something that didn't work.

I wound-up having to hand solder all the through hole. I didn't have a
choice...the production
schedule demanded that I do something immediately...I couldn't wait for
another experimental
fixture. Hand soldering wasn't that bad, but the area where you were hand
soldering had to be
pre-heated first if you wanted any decent barrel fill. That was
accomplished with a hand held
heat gun for a minute or two.

Of course I have a new Friday video clip up on my page. It's a continuance
of last Friday's NTC
theme; "Cats". Some of you may have seen this before, but it's a clip of
this lovable little kitty
named "Pinky". In fact, the gentleman in the clip says that Pinky is the
pet of the week from the
animal shelter that the video is being made for.

Pinky, Pinky, Pinky...you lovable little cat you.

-Steve Gregory-

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