Eggtimer Quark Destruction

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One of the things I did was make a board holder. A couple of blocks of wood with a saw kerf on one side for the board to slide into about 1/16" and a couple of round magnets recessed into the bottom. I use them in a small toaster oven pan. Works great!
 

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Agreed, great info! I just knocked out Quark #2 in record time. Still have a Quantum and EggFinder Tx / Rx to go. And some finishing touches on the 5.5" LOC Patriot (my L2, and my first redundant DD) that half of this stuff is going into!
 
If you go to the trouble to get the templates made up, you'll find that silkscreening the solder paste onto the PC board and reflowing it in an oven is much quicker and easier than using a hot air tool. The results are more consistent, too. It does take some setup time, so I personally only do it with the larger boards like the TRS and the Proton.
 
Gotcha -- thanks, Cris. I'm happy going from hand soldering to the hot air rework station. A reflow oven and templates might blow my mind (and budget) at this point, given that I only have a couple boards to build. All part of the fun, too!
 
This is a good thread. once it gets past the destruction part, the hot air parts are sticky-worthy


Haha, glad to be of help by starting with destruction :p For the record I did get my Quark working, but I agree, this answers a lot of questions I had about hot-air rework. I assumed one needed an oven to do it.
 
I ordered a nice aluminum. paste mask for the Proton. If anyone wants to borrow it for a couple of weeks, shoot me a PM. Anyone is welcome to borrow it. Just mail it back to me when done (or to the next guy on the list)AB09AED5-F83F-4A83-8BF1-C14872525864.jpeg
Curtis
 
Good catch. I meant to look that up and got side tracked. I might have to run a quote on a few stencils.

if you do get a quote, see if they do bulk discounts? Maybe we can get a small group buy going for those who are interested.
 
The video above seemed to make it a bit more difficult than it needed to be. In a production environment the solder stencils work well. At home you can just paste each pad individually or as I have seen done just run one line of paste down the row of pads. The surface tension in the paste as you heat it works with the solder mask on the PCB and the paste magically goes to the pads.

Personally I don't use paste very often, I prefer wire solder and a flux pen. Whatever gives you good joints, closest to target condition, is a good method to use.
 
On the practice board I noticed some issues when I tried to do a set of nearby components at the same time. If I got too close with the hot air, it would occasionally blow them around a bit even with the air turned all the way down (I'm using an 898 from eBay, for whatever that's worth).

This whole process really is like magic. I've done plenty of hand soldering and I'm perfectly mediocre with it. This allows me to do things that are a fraction of the size with exponentially better results and in less time.
@CalebJ When I do a numbers of components that are close together at the same time I use the medium air tip and shoot the air down vertically. The larger nozzle seems to decrease the air pressure and shooting the air straight down kind of pushes the componets onto the PCB.
 
@CalebJ When I do a numbers of components that are close together at the same time I use the medium air tip and shoot the air down vertically. The larger nozzle seems to decrease the air pressure and shooting the air straight down kind of pushes the componets onto the PCB.
Thanks for confirming - trying the wider tip was on my list to test. I'll swap before using it again.
 
I ordered a nice aluminum. paste mask for the Proton. If anyone wants to borrow it for a couple of weeks, shoot me a PM. Anyone is welcome to borrow it. Just mail it back to me when done (or to the next guy on the list)View attachment 417619
Curtis
Has anyone else purchased a stencil for an Eggtimer product from OSH Stencils? If so, posting the Gerber/Eagle/whatever file used to order the stencil would save re-inventing the wheel, and would be a great service for guys like me who don't know the first thing about creating such a file. I'm reluctant to attempt to learn yet another program to make a file---probably ending up with an error or six...

Many thanks! -- Terry
 
Has anyone else purchased a stencil for an Eggtimer product from OSH Stencils? If so, posting the Gerber/Eagle/whatever file used to order the stencil would save re-inventing the wheel, and would be a great service for guys like me who don't know the first thing about creating such a file. I'm reluctant to attempt to learn yet another program to make a file---probably ending up with an error or six...
Yeah, I ordered the Proton solder paste stencil mask from OSH. from the Gerber file that Chris posted. You are welcome to borrow it, if you want.
 
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