SMD soldering with hot air gun

Hi all,

I saw a lot of you-tube videos on soldering SMDs with the use of a hot air gun and solder paste. But all of those boards had solder mask on them which aided the proper flow of solder. But is it possible to do this without the solder mask? (my first thought is that it can't be done)

The main reason I'm asking this is because I have this DRV8432 HSSOP package to be soldered.

Regards

Yes you can use this in home soldering. I solder on this way a lots without soldering mask.

Soldering paste should be good quality.




Best regards,
Peter

The flux in the paste is what gets the nice flow. The mask is to keep the solder from getting where you don't want it.

Put termal strip if you want to restrict movement on tracks. For home prototype gives good quality, later when you decide to make big serie order PCB from some pro company with soldering mask and other things such hole plating,....


Best regars,
Peter

Thank you all for the replies

Put termal strip if you want to restrict movement on tracks

Click to expand...

Peter can you please exlain this a little?

Thank you

dmta said:

Thank you all for the replies



Peter can you please exlain this a little?

Thank you

Click to expand...

Instead soldering iron like on picture use hot air rework device and also soldering paste for this purpose.

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Kapton tape aids in drag soldering surface mount parts
http://hackaday.com/2011/04/03/kapton-tape-aids-in-drag-soldering-surface-mount-parts/

Drag soldering works exactly as its name implies, by dragging a bead of solder across fine-pitch pins you can quickly solder an entire row. The method relies on clean joints, so liquid solder flux is often used to make sure there is good flow. But if you’re drag soldering on boards that you’ve etched yourself the solder can sometimes run down the trace, rather than staying where you want it. Professionally manufactured boards don’t have this problem since they have solder mask covering the copper that doesn’t need soldering.

Product name: Kapton, high temperature resistant adhesive tape, polyimide film. Kapton is made by the base material polyimide film coatingl, with high temperature resistance, high adhesion, used for protecting “gold finger " when reflow soldering, applicable to the electronic industry, motor insulation, PCB soldering, PCB gold-plated fingers, hot air pingoles progress and protecting gold fingers when PCB spray-tin through tin stove as well as ware-soldering in each phase, and remove tape cover, no residue on gold finger surface.

**broken link removed**


Why to bother with soldering mask on DIY home boards?

You can do a lots at home but still hole plating is problem.



Soldering paste :

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The key to success when manually applying solder paste is applying just enough paste to establish the bond between the components and the pads on the PCB, but not so much that it seeps over and forms bridges with neighbouring pads.

Helpful Hint: Solder paste typically has a shelf-life of about 6 months, and should be kept refrigerated. Preferrably not somewhere that you keep your food, though, since there are some yucky things that go into the manufacturing of solder paste. If you have a small bar fridge that you can repurpose for storing things like solder paste or other chemicals/substances you might use (for electronics purposes, of course!), you can just stick the paste in a sealed ziplock bag, and mark the date it was manufactured and opened.





Best regards,
Peter

:wink:

I have had success with soldering up to 18 pins SMDs using regular solder and home made PCBs. You first tin the pcb pads well with regular solder. The solder shd be a little thicker than usual for tinning. The key is to hold the device securely in place over the pads. I made an "arbor" to help with this. Its basically a wooden arm with a Al. rod thro it that presses the device in place. Once secured thus, you heat the pins with your iron, which melts the solder under it on the pcb and solders the pin. Verify with a magnifying glass that all pins are well soldered. It it needs more solder apply solder at a point away from the pins, and let it flow in.

vkj