Re: Announcing the ORDuino !
Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:43 am
LOL! thanks , on both counts!naPS wrote:Damn kid, you soldered that yourself?
Impressive!
To be fair, i did have some help, (hot air and IR rework stations) but it's *really* time consuming.
Over the years i've developed methods to reliably hand solder just about anything, but the FTDI chip was a particular pain. I made the mistake of trusting their component footprint library and realised to my horror when i tried to assemble it that the pads are completely recessed under the chip with no way to probe or inspect them, forget about hand soldering. thats the last time i trust *any* pre-defined library part. that will be updated to a more accessible footprint for the production version- now that i've confirmed that it really doesn't need the external crystal or any terminators on the D+, D- lines, i'll have room for it.
I mainly use a 20X stereo microscope and pro grade pencil iron for most of it. first protos need to get assembled in stages and unit test each section as their assembled, so i can't just reflow it all at once, and more than 2 passes at reflow starts to get risky for the parts and even the board itself. I also like to do it this way to catch any easy goofs on the BOM in the process, because wrong parts in the wrong place can really ruin your day (or week) when trying to bring up a board for the first time, and that's a pretty common occurrence when you have so many tiny unmarked parts on a board.