3 ms·

Nice list! I also recommend "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. It is quite encyclopedic, but often very clear and well illustrated.

Animats 10y ago
Yes. The Third Edition came out last year, after a delay of about 20 years, and now they're up to date. This matters, because they mention lots of specific part numbers. Horowitz and Hill haven't accepted that everything is surface mount now. Read their chapter on soldering, where they whine about surface mount, instead of telling you how to do it. There are lots of surface mount soldering videos, most of which are by people who have much better than average tweezer dexterity.
- TaylorAlexander 10y ago
  That's unfortunate about the surface mount. As a word of encouragement, I know one can do complex surface mount soldering with just a few specialized tools. I picked up a good stereo zoom microscope from craigslist. Mine is a Leica but I also recommend the amscope and similar models you can get online. They're a chinese rebrand but I've used those models and the optical quality is great. I recommend the models with a boom arm if you have the space. Then you need a hot air rework station. You can apply solder paste manually from a tube - just squirt the paste onto the pads. This is uneven and will require clean up with an iron and sometimes multiple tries. Get a no clean flux pen also. If you want to do more than one PCB, I highly recommend using a solder stencil. I recommend getting PCBs from Seeed studio in china - 10 PCBs starts at $20 (total) plus shipping (around $40). Throw in a solder stencil for another $20. When the stencil arrives use heavy scissors to cut out about two inches/50mm around your design, take one of the pieces of stiff board that the PCBs are packaged with, tape down some extra PCBs around one free PCB, and then tape the stencil on the top so it lines up. Get some solder paste from Digikey or Sparkfun and use an old gift card to squeegee it onto the PCB. Then lift the stencil up using one piece of tape as a hinge. Super easy to do this at home. Now place on parts using tweezers and the microscope. Then use the hot air gun to slowly heat up the PCB till it's all about 260C, and then turn it to 360C and briefly melt the solder at all locations. Then let it cool. If you want to do this regularly, invest in a T962A soldering oven from ebay for ~$300 from ebay. I did a kickstarter for a little wireless internet of things board, and this is my process for home assembly. When you want to do mass assembly, consider Seeed studio. I had them assemble 4000+ boards and it mostly went well. I did have an issue with an incorrectly substituted part so be very clear about what work you expect done and be clear about which parts you will accept substitutes for. They did make good on their error and I would use them again. My email is in my profile if you want more tips on SMT soldering. For reference, here are two board that I soldered using the above techniques: http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2016/07/IMG_6493_edited_sm.jpg http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2016/07/IMG_6493_e... http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2017/01/IMG_7344_edited_sm.JPG http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2017/01/IMG_7344_e... EDIT: For PCB design I previously would have recommended EAGLE, but now I would recommend KiCAD. I have not yet used KiCAD, but this is just a learning curve issue (new software versus a busy schedule). If you're learning from scratch and want a tool you can use forever, I'd recommend KiCAD based on recommendations from others.
  - Animats 10y ago
    The T-962 and its clones out of the box have temperature so uneven that it can scorch the center of a board while reflowing OK an inch away from the center. With various mods [1] it's marginally usable. I've used TechShop's unmodified clone unit (melted the solder mask at board center and scorched the FR4 substrate) and a used modified Puhui unit (after careful setting of a suitable heating curve, acceptable.) With new firmware, the cooling fan is run slowly during the heating phase, which stirs the hot air and reduces the hot spot problem. You have to pay about $3000 to get a reflow oven that Just Works, unfortunately. The good ones are true convection ovens with uniform air temperature. KiCAD is not bad. The schematic drawing part is mostly OK. The schematic symbol and footprint editors are poor draw programs, and the library management is painful, but once you figure out all the quirks, usable. Board layout is strange. There are really two board layout programs, one for OpenGL and one for non-OpenGL, and they have different features, some of which are completely irrelevant to the display. You can switch back and forth on the fly. There used to be an auto-router, but due to an IP problem (the author of the auto-router worked for a company that sold auto-routers) it's been deprecated. Manual routing has a lot of computer assistance, and is usable but touchy. The output end, with Gerber and drill files, seems to work fine; I've had boards fabbed by two vendors with no problems. [1] https://github.com/UnifiedEngineering/T-962-improvements https://github.com/UnifiedEngineering/T-962-improvements
    - abakker 10y ago
      If you are already making your own PCBs, making your own kiln with a thermocouple, PID, and heating element ought to be no sweat. Just buy a handful of softbricks, cut them with a saw, and put them together. I've made kilns like this that go up to 1950F. 300 - 400 should be really easy.
      - TaylorAlexander 10y ago
        It is significantly easier to hit buy it now than it is to construct a functional temperature controlled oven. People who want to DIY often modify toaster ovens, but I haven't heard of anyone construction their own heating chamber as you've described. Note that portability is a concern for me, since I move often.
kasbah 10y ago
Yeah a books section would be nice. I must admit that "The Art of Electronics" is was so obvious that I didn't even think of it. That's the trouble with trying to get into the beginners mind set I suppose. Do people have any other book recommendations we could fill the section with?

Animats 10y ago

Yes. The Third Edition came out last year, after a delay of about 20 years, and now they're up to date. This matters, because they mention lots of specific part numbers. Horowitz and Hill haven't accepted that everything is surface mount now. Read their chapter on soldering, where they whine about surface mount, instead of telling you how to do it. There are lots of surface mount soldering videos, most of which are by people who have much better than average tweezer dexterity.

TaylorAlexander 10y ago
That's unfortunate about the surface mount. As a word of encouragement, I know one can do complex surface mount soldering with just a few specialized tools. I picked up a good stereo zoom microscope from craigslist. Mine is a Leica but I also recommend the amscope and similar models you can get online. They're a chinese rebrand but I've used those models and the optical quality is great. I recommend the models with a boom arm if you have the space. Then you need a hot air rework station. You can apply solder paste manually from a tube - just squirt the paste onto the pads. This is uneven and will require clean up with an iron and sometimes multiple tries. Get a no clean flux pen also. If you want to do more than one PCB, I highly recommend using a solder stencil. I recommend getting PCBs from Seeed studio in china - 10 PCBs starts at $20 (total) plus shipping (around $40). Throw in a solder stencil for another $20. When the stencil arrives use heavy scissors to cut out about two inches/50mm around your design, take one of the pieces of stiff board that the PCBs are packaged with, tape down some extra PCBs around one free PCB, and then tape the stencil on the top so it lines up. Get some solder paste from Digikey or Sparkfun and use an old gift card to squeegee it onto the PCB. Then lift the stencil up using one piece of tape as a hinge. Super easy to do this at home. Now place on parts using tweezers and the microscope. Then use the hot air gun to slowly heat up the PCB till it's all about 260C, and then turn it to 360C and briefly melt the solder at all locations. Then let it cool. If you want to do this regularly, invest in a T962A soldering oven from ebay for ~$300 from ebay. I did a kickstarter for a little wireless internet of things board, and this is my process for home assembly. When you want to do mass assembly, consider Seeed studio. I had them assemble 4000+ boards and it mostly went well. I did have an issue with an incorrectly substituted part so be very clear about what work you expect done and be clear about which parts you will accept substitutes for. They did make good on their error and I would use them again. My email is in my profile if you want more tips on SMT soldering. For reference, here are two board that I soldered using the above techniques: http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2016/07/IMG_6493_edited_sm.jpg http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2016/07/IMG_6493_e... http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2017/01/IMG_7344_edited_sm.JPG http://www.tlalexander.com/content/images/2017/01/IMG_7344_e... EDIT: For PCB design I previously would have recommended EAGLE, but now I would recommend KiCAD. I have not yet used KiCAD, but this is just a learning curve issue (new software versus a busy schedule). If you're learning from scratch and want a tool you can use forever, I'd recommend KiCAD based on recommendations from others.
- Animats 10y ago
  The T-962 and its clones out of the box have temperature so uneven that it can scorch the center of a board while reflowing OK an inch away from the center. With various mods [1] it's marginally usable. I've used TechShop's unmodified clone unit (melted the solder mask at board center and scorched the FR4 substrate) and a used modified Puhui unit (after careful setting of a suitable heating curve, acceptable.) With new firmware, the cooling fan is run slowly during the heating phase, which stirs the hot air and reduces the hot spot problem. You have to pay about $3000 to get a reflow oven that Just Works, unfortunately. The good ones are true convection ovens with uniform air temperature. KiCAD is not bad. The schematic drawing part is mostly OK. The schematic symbol and footprint editors are poor draw programs, and the library management is painful, but once you figure out all the quirks, usable. Board layout is strange. There are really two board layout programs, one for OpenGL and one for non-OpenGL, and they have different features, some of which are completely irrelevant to the display. You can switch back and forth on the fly. There used to be an auto-router, but due to an IP problem (the author of the auto-router worked for a company that sold auto-routers) it's been deprecated. Manual routing has a lot of computer assistance, and is usable but touchy. The output end, with Gerber and drill files, seems to work fine; I've had boards fabbed by two vendors with no problems. [1] https://github.com/UnifiedEngineering/T-962-improvements https://github.com/UnifiedEngineering/T-962-improvements
  - abakker 10y ago
    If you are already making your own PCBs, making your own kiln with a thermocouple, PID, and heating element ought to be no sweat. Just buy a handful of softbricks, cut them with a saw, and put them together. I've made kilns like this that go up to 1950F. 300 - 400 should be really easy.
    - TaylorAlexander 10y ago
      It is significantly easier to hit buy it now than it is to construct a functional temperature controlled oven. People who want to DIY often modify toaster ovens, but I haven't heard of anyone construction their own heating chamber as you've described. Note that portability is a concern for me, since I move often.

kasbah 10y ago

Yeah a books section would be nice. I must admit that "The Art of Electronics" is was so obvious that I didn't even think of it. That's the trouble with trying to get into the beginners mind set I suppose. Do people have any other book recommendations we could fill the section with?