Hi Ted: I wanted to get into some SMD building and tried the hot air approach initially. It was difficult and unreliable, and I messed up more than I had success.
The best decision I made was to invest in a modestly-priced infrared SMD oven from Amazon. This works perfectly for me and I have now successfully made well over 100 boards with the device. Price range was under $200. There is a lot of negatively about some of these ovens as they are made in China, but despite the poor English in their documentation I found that they work just fine. Put your pasted board inside with properly placed components, and “voila!” - a working circuit board in 7 minutes! While the English in the documentation for my particular oven was poor, one can easily figure out what the writer means. Similarly, the user interface on my oven leaves a bit to be desired, but one can easily figure out what the screens mean, and get the job done. The oven has about 5 pre-programmed heating cycles for different types of solder and different heating profiles. I just use the default cycle as it matches my configuration (lead-based solder paste). Another suggestion is to invest in aluminum solder paste stencils for the boards you are building, if they are available. These are about $8 from a place in Utah. They beat trying to squirt paste onto closely-spaced pads with a syringe or other tool! Hope this info helps, 73, Kevin VE7ZD / KN7Q > On Oct 20, 2019, at 12:33 PM, Dauer, Edward <eda...@law.du.edu> wrote: > > I am thinking about trying my hand at building a kit with a bunch of SMDs. I > don’t yet know the gauge. Any suggestions about the brand or type of hot air > soldering gun I should buy? Any other tools I’ll need, like narrow-gauge > solder, wicks, whatever? > > Thanks, > > Ted, KN1CBR > > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to mcqui...@sfu.ca ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
