Low-Cost SMD Soldering Setup

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 20:06:04 +0000

The following blog post shows some details of my SMD soldering process. This was based on a larger video I did (linked below) showing the entire soldering process.

Video of Soldering Setup

The following shows me soldering a complete board with BGA device.

Equipment Used

In the above video, there are several pieces of equipment used. The following shows you some of the important ones.

Reflow Oven

I'm using a T962A reflow oven. I recommend this over the T962, which is a smaller version. The T962A has 3 heat lamps so has a more even heat distribution. Be aware you can't use the full surface area - about the middle half I find is successful, but depends a little on complexity of the PCB.

I specifically purchased mine from this seller on AliExpress, check other sellers as prices change over time. You might turn it on quickly to confirm it works, but before doing much there are some important fixes:

Removing masking tape, replace with Kapton (Polymide) tape. See instructables post for details.

Fixing missing ground connections. Some versions have poor grounding between the outer (metal!) case and the wall plug. See the wiki page for a photo of this fix.

Updating the firmware and adding a cold-junction sensor. This is the most complex task, and requires soldering a DS18B20 to the mainboard, then using a USB-Serial adapter to reflash the firmware. See the front page of the T962-Improvements Github Repo, which has links to the required soldering. There is also an optional fix to reduce the very noisy small fan.

Fume Hood

I built a fume hood out of the following:

2x4's for frame.

Thick plastic drop-sheet.

Powerful vent booster fan with variable speed control.

Active charcoal oven range hood filter (mounted in top of fume hood).

Active charcoal filter for car cabin (mounted in cardboard box used as exhaust).

You can also improve one out of a range hood from an oven. See video for general fume hood construction.

Manual Pick-n-Place

This requires three things:

Vacuum pump, which you can make from a Tetra Whisper pump (see instructables link). Get some of the nice silicon tubing at the same time (like $3 from Amazon).

Syringe with hole drilled into body. You can get syringes (don't need the pointy bit!) from pharmacy, or order from Newark/Digikey. When you cover the hole, you force the vacuum through the tip, picking up the part. Release your finger from the hole to drop the part. See the above video for details.

The tips for pick and place, which are "Luer Lock" needles bent slightly (for small parts) or commercially available tips (for larger parts).