sudomod

I just received the blank V2 board and purchased the parts for the battery monitor from Arrow.com. I highly despise even thinking about manually soldering all of the parts, due to the size. I have been browsing YouTube and Amazon for other options. One thing that I came across is using solder paste for the SMD parts and a hot air gun rework station in addition. This looks like an extremely viable option as all I have to do is slather the paste on, drop on the parts, heat it up, and all of the SMD's just direct themselves to the exact position. I am going to attempt this, so if anyone has done this before, or is also thinking about doing this, please give me tips and feedback. Thanks!

Sounds professionell.

I never worked with solder paste up to now.
Normally I just pre-tin the board pads with good solder, add flux, position the electronic component and heat up everything by hotair. Not too long not to damage the parts by heat. Flux: Amtech 599

On the little IC (the ADS1015 chip) you want a small line of solder paste going across the legs (usually a solder paste syringe is used) so there isn't bridging once the solder melts. It can and will work as that is how I often do it myself.

I have recently done this myself (soldered up some v2 kits), but was able to use a soldering iron with a fine tip, I don't have a hot air station. I guess it all boils down to your confidence and skill, the components are pretty small (but not crazy small), and there is a good amount of spacing.

If you already have a hot air rework station, that might be an easier route to attempt, but I don't know if it would be worth it, if you have to buy one specifically for this. Unless you plan to use it in the future.

Speaking of which, I should probably invest in a hot air gun.

I got this one:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NCB4SQ7

It was pretty cheap and is going to do everything I need it to. I also bought low-temp soldering paste for the SMD components: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017R ... UTF8&psc=1

Solder paste for some reason scares me. I personally would use a fine tip iron, but I have a friend who uses paste and a small toaster oven and it seems fairly successful. A hot air gun is pretty nice to have tho for removing USB ports and stuff.

I've heard using an iron and paste is also a very good method, just melt the paste with your iron and the surface tension pulls the solder to the pin and pad

For incidental smd soldering a fine tip iron and flux will do the trick just fine.
Get a bottle of liquid smd flux, wet the components good and put a tiny blob of tin on your iron.
The flux will make the tin flow perfectly.
Check youtube for instructions, search for smd flux soldering.

But if you have the money to invest in a smd station that's great

Hey can you give me a link to the battery monitor??? I need to buy one

Sileon45 wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 13, 2018 8:25 am

Hey can you give me a link to the battery monitor??? I need to buy one

The battery monitor coolcrawler is talking about is the one that was intergrated on the (spare) v2 boards that Helder had for sale recently (now sold out).
As they where spare boards the monitor was not present, you could choose to leave it or buy the components yourself to complete the board. So this was not a part that you could buy separately, the ones that where made for the v1 (this was a separate board) are not available anymore either.