[hpsdr] Atlas, How do I hand solder this thing?

[Bill Tracey]

I've never used  pre-warming on the hot air gun work I've done.  I 
generally  don't try and do an entire board in one shot (unless it is small 
like a soft rock)  - gun seems capable of heating a section at a time and 
reflowing the solder effectively.   I only use the hot air technique on 
surface mount parts - any through hole stuff gets done by hand after the 
SMT parts are done.

I'd definitely practice on something it little less scarce than an Atlas 
before trying a hot air gun on it.  Actually if you have any old obsolete 
PC cards you can hot air gun some parts off it to get a feel for how much 
heat it takes to flow the solder - and put them back to get a feel for the 
technique.   For removal I  heat the components of interest until the 
solder flows and knudge the part off with a toothpick.

Regards,

Bill  (kd5tfd)

At 06:12 AM 6/21/2006, Thompson_Peter at emc.com wrote:
>The hot air gun approach looks interesting however, I see in the photos on
>the web site that a cup warmer is used to raise the temp of the board before
>applying heat from the gun.  In the example shown, the board is small enough
>to fit on the surface of the warmer plate but I don't think such a plate is
>big enough to accommodate the Atlas board.  Questions: how essential is it
>to 'pre-warm' the board before applying heat with the gun?  Is the gun
>capable of getting the job done on its own?
>
>Pete, N3EVL



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