Hello,
I am pretty frustrated with my first SMT project -- I designed a board, had it made at Seed Studio, and manually soldered all the components (I have a decent Hakko FX-888 soldering iron). Parts of the board works and some other parts don't work. I've soldered a couple of boards and there is always some issue that I need to troubleshoot. The worst part is that I am wasting a lot of time troubleshooting, which prevents me from focusing on the firmware, or to move on to the next project. It's frustrating to not know if a problem is caused by a bad component, a bad PCB, or a cold joint. The same subsystem (a latching solenoid driver) is duplicated four times on this board, and it works on both the breadboard and on other parts of the board, so I think the design is good. I am even having problems tracing with a multimeter signals within the board (sometimes I have continuity and some other times I don't).
I used liquid flux to facilitate soldering of all components and that seems to always make a mess (pads seem to get corroded over time, the board looks dirty, etc.). If the design has problems it is really difficult to diagnose because pads look corroded so it's hard to make good contact with the multimeter. Pads are very small to put there the multimeter probes. I used 603 resistors, SOICs, SOT-23 transistors, etc. Nothing too tiny I guess but it is being difficult for me to solder all these components by hand and have everything working without some serious troubleshooting.
I know there are better ways to finish these boards but I'm not sure which one to choose. I don't mind making a small investment to buy a small toaster over or an electric skillet. Anything to avoid the frustration or getting discouraged from working on my electronic projects (which is currently the case). I do not intend to do mass-produce any boards; I just need to produce a couple of boards of each project for personal use. I don't know why this is being so hard; these boards are not complex; I'm not talking about creating a Raspberry Pi-like board.
I've heard good things about the electric skillet method (
https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/59)... Should I go this way as my first attempt to do better than the manual method that is causing me so much frustration? Recommendations for a good starter solder paste to use with whatever method you recommend would also be appreciated (bonus points for a Mouser part number as I need to place an order with them soon).
Thanks in advance!
Frustrated,
Eloy Paris.-