Month: January 2014

In the past, when I’ve done surface mount soldering, I’ve either used a hot air gun or my soldering iron on parts that I had access to, and avoided designing circuits that required QFN, DFN, LGA, BGA and etc. A few years back I invested in a 2000W cooking hot plate to allow me to use solder paste for those parts with no access underneath. I have yet to get my solder paste out of its’ tube and stumbled on a YouTube video showing how you can tin your pads with normal solder and re-flow in the same manner. This … Continue reading Surface Mount Technology Soldering

In order to make the WearWare: G-Force Data Logger as small as possible, home etching or milling was out of the question. I’ve wanted to have my own PCBs made by a fab house for quite a while, and although I have used Spirit Circuits Go-Naked service to make two layer PCBs before, they don’t come with a solder mask or silkscreen. I’ve looked at services such as Fusion PCB, Gold Phoenix and OSH Park in the past but never took the plunge before. To aid in the development of the WearWare: G-Force data logger it was decided that a … Continue reading WareWare: OSHPark First Impressions