Re: [N8VEM-S100:4743] "Pin In Paste" Soldering of S-100 Connectors

["J. Alexander Jacocks" <jjac...@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 1:24 AM, Andrew Bingham <abin...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have Ant's nice 18-slot backplane here, with the striking red PCB.  I'd like to get it built to officially kick off my "new build" S-100 system, but I am having flashbacks to the 12 x 96-pin ECB backplane I made (1152 pins vs 1800) and thinking about how long it will take.  The pins are spaced out more than the DIN connectors but there are so many of them...

I am considering an alternate approach based on a technique called "pin in paste" used for soldering through hole components in industry, as shown in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlktpQvqxtE

The idea would be:

-Using a squeegee, "load" paste into 2-3 connectors worth of holes until it is sticking just a little bit out the other side, like in the video

-Insert connectors and use bolts to hold in place.  Solder paste gets push out on the pins like in the video.

-Using a Hot Air Rework station set at the appropriate reflow temperature for the solder paste, go down each row of pins and reflow the solder into the joints.

My feeling is that using this method I would be able to complete 2-3 connectors in say 15 minutes and the entire board in like 1.5 hours vs many hours by hand.

Thoughts?  Crazy idea?

Andrew,

It won't take as long as you think, to solder this up.  It took me far, far longer to locate the S100 connectors than to solder them in.

The connections here are quite important, of course, and they'd be quite a pain to diagnose, if not working, so I would stick to traditional soldering methods.  For example, I built the whole board in ~3 hours, and I definitely wasn't hurrying.

Also, and this is completely opinion, I think that building the boards is a large part of the fun of hobbyist computing.  So, I'm usually not pushing hard to get it over with.

- Alex