[GreenKeys] Radio Shack

[Ron Kolarik]

Mike I regularly solder, by hand, chip components down to 0402 size and 
FPGA's as well. The problem with a toaster oven, for me anyway,
is the paste has a shelf life and on really big projects you can't take 
a break and come back later. Do a search on "drag soldering" to
see how easy it is to do something like an FPGA, takes a bit of practice 
but works once you get it down. I use a variety of component
hold downs (all homebrew) to do individual chips, paste/liquid flux and 
a good Hakko iron. I do have a hot air station that comes in handy
for rework but mostly use the Hakko for construction. Before anyone 
starts with the age crap and bad eyes I'm on the dark side of 65 and
if I can do it anyone can.

Ron
K0IDT

On 9/14/2014 4:07 PM, Mike via GreenKeys wrote:
> Jim,
> There was an article in QST a while back ( I can check the "archives" and get the issue # if you like) that described a method of using a toaster oven as a way to solder SMD's for the average hobbiest. It seemed to be a pretty straight forward procedure and required only the addition of a temp sensor (thermistor?) to allow you to manually control the process by turning off the oven and allowing the temperature to "coast" while the solder paste flows. Definitely not for mass production, but it could put some of the zip back into reading those catalogs.
>
> Mike O'Day
> N9ODM
>
>
>> On Sep 13, 2014, at 11:35, Jim Haynes <jhhaynes at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 12 Sep 2014, John Nagle wrote:
>>>
>>>   For a lot of hobbyists, though, Digi-Key isn't friendly
>>> enough.   For a 100 ohm, low-wattage, through hole resistor
>>> they offer over 50 products. Radio Shack would have one.
>>> It would be worse quality than the cheapest offering
>>> on Digi-Key, but still, Digi-Key is scary if you're
>>> not an EE or electronics technician.
>> Yeah.  And when I was a youngster it was fun to just read the Allied
>> catalog: all that variety of stuff!  But today a printed catalog is
>> much thicker, but filled with a lot of surface mount and other kinds
>> of parts that the average hobbyist can't imagine using.  So reading
>> it is pretty boring.
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