SR63ng Board Built

Finished buttoning together my SR63ng board from George, who did a great job designing the board and assembling the kit.  Also was able to hit quite a few beacons today on WSPR with it, so it's working great!

SR63ng Top

SR63ng Bottom

Reflow Oven

So I finally got a chance to do a bit more practice this weekend with my reflow controller and modified toaster oven.  First of all I highly recommend the Black and Decker Infrawave ovens, they heat fast with quick response which is perfect.  The second thing I recommend is making sure you understand the heating profile of the solder paste you use.  My first test was a disaster as it turns out I had the wrong profile for the stuff I had gotten locally.  After a bit of trial and error, I found a profile that works out well for me.  Attached a few pics below, the 100pin chip was SO much easier with the oven.  I did have several solder bridges since there was a bit too much paste, but the solder braid/wick cleaned it up nicely.  Chip worked too!  Though until I cooked it as my board has a bug somewhere, but that's a whole other story...

 I think I'm now ready for the SDR-Widget and it's 144pin chip!

Applied the paste

Placed the chup pretty close to where it needs to go

Board baking away for 2.5 minutes

Final result, several blobs, but perfectly lined up! A lot easier than eyeing it the old way...

SMD Reflow soldering and other updates

Been working on a little project the last few days that I hope will be done this week so I can post some pics.  I modified an Infrawave oven to a computer controlled reflow controller so I can start doing SMT parts using solder paste in the oven.  With any luck this won't be a total disaster :)  Hope to post some pics in a couple days when it's done, and maybe even do my first reflow! 

Also got some other good news, got my 2nd motherboard 4.3 kit from Art today, as well as confirmation of my shipping SoftRock 6.3NG board from George.  Will be having some fun soon with these!