Soldering with a Toaster Oven 252
nullset sent in a link to the Seattle Robotics Society about soldering in an unconventional way. Instead of the traditional soldering iron, Kenneth Maxon has successfully used a toaster oven to solder surface mount parts. The "magic ingredient" that facilitates this is a water-soluble solder paste. I wish I'd thought of this back when I had to solder one of those *ahem* aftermarket accessories to my playstation, since the whole process looks easier than trying to hold a soldering iron steady.
Toaster, the most extreme machine (Score:2, Interesting)
(I regretfully ask)
Solder Paste!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't this paste have a higher resistance than the solder we know and love? Couln't a soldering iron be used to heat it with greater efficiency? Does it have any use outside of SMD?
Maybe I'm just weird, but I won't part with my soldering iron any time soon. SMD may be cool, but it doesn't have the "cobbled togethor" look of a traditionally etched and soldered circuit.
alternate use for magnifying glass or laser pen? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously though, wouldn't it be cool if someone modified a laser-pen (or appropriately set up fibre-optic light source) to serve as a soldering iron?
No more fumbling with hot-metal iron pens. Shutter the light and it's cold!
Re:what do you mean unconventional? (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you guys think Ball Grid Array packages are mounted on a board?
Which reminds me of this humorous episode where a guy pulled down the oven from the shelf and cooked his lunch in it, not knowing what it was... and when we learned what had happened we all just about shit a brick. He didn't get lead poisoning or anything though.
Re:alternate use for magnifying glass or laser pen (Score:3, Interesting)
I tried this without much success (Score:2, Interesting)
I was pretty disappointed. There were tons of solder bridges (where the solder connects two pins together), some pins that didn't stick reliably, etc. I wound up spending as much effor cleaning up as I would have doing it by hand in the first place. If I was going to try it again, I might make a solder mask to apply the paste only on the pads, instead of running a thin line across the pads as they recommended.