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Soldering the current range jumpers on Microboost

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trinity_2200

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What the best way to solder the jumpers which select the current range on a Microboost driver? The driver is so small .. i found that it's very hard to made the solder stick on the board
 





Tin a piece of monocore wire and cut it short enough to be the bridge (fingernail clippers lat you cut very short). Set the wire across the ends of the resistor you want to solder and hold it steady with tweezers or a toothpick or something. Touch one end of the wire briefly with the tip of your cleaned soldering iron. Heat will flow through your bridge wire into the resistors solder and melt it. you will feel the tinned bridgewire sink into the resistor's solder. Now do the other side of the bridgewire. Even a well heated lowly 15 watt iron will only take a half-second to do this. Don't overheat the resistors or they can fall off the board if you melt all the solder.

I don't recommend solder-blobs to jump the gaps because it can get messy and you're simply introducing unnecessary solder onto the board. Just more chance to screw up.
 
Personally, I prefer to load some solder onto the iron tip and apply a blob , using the end of the 471 resistor as an anchor instead of the PCB pad:
DSC09106.jpg


You must use a temp controlled iron to do this, so the iron is just a bit above the solder melting temp.
 
I find that it's very easy to do with a small blob of solder applied to the tip of the iron, as Dr.Lava described above.
 
I just carefully flux the area I intend to bridge with a solder blob. I use a lot of heat with a temp controlled station and a pointed soldering iron attachment. I try to limit my caffeine intake before doing it, as shaking is the enemy of SMD.
Question for the doctor: when I used a somewhat drained ultrafire battery, the output pulsed about 60HZ. Is it just bouncing back and forth for the forward voltage needed by the LD near it's threshold?
When it happened the driver got quite warm, as well as the battery. Any info? Thanks
 
When it pulses like that, it means the battery can't supply the juice the driver needs to keep going, but the battery output voltage is still high enough for the driver to try to start. At this point you should replace or recharge the battery. As Li-Ion batteries age, their internal resistance increases so when a load is applied, the output voltage decreases quickly. This can cause pulsing also.
 
First rule ----- PRACTICE soldering on some old boards salvaged from red harvests. Soldering is an art and sometimes even I screw up a bit. I use a 25 watt temp controled iron with a fine tip. I do as DrLava says. If you do it quickly, some flux will remain.

HMike
 
I couldnt agree more - soldering is a skill that requires practise. Just start with some blink-a-led circuits to get the hang of it. With some experience, work on increasingly smaller pieces becomes easier.

Few people manage to stat out with surface-mount components, and there is no need to really. Once you get comfortable with PTH components, you can move to smaller SMT work.

It isnt all that difficult, but you need to get a 'feel' for it - how surface tention tends to make things do what you want on masked boards, and makes things happen you didnt want on unmasked boards too.
 
I started out practicing on old electronic boards that I had harvested. I desoldered a resistor, diode, etc. from the board and then tried to solder it back, I would do this until I felt I could do it with my eyes closed (don't actually do that). After that I desoldered all the components and soldered the components back on the board randomly just to get the hang of it.

After all of that I felt I was ready to start working with builds and it defiantly helped, but when you throw in that fact that you working with a $20 electronic and an expensive diode the mood changes a little, but as long as you are slow and careful you will be just fine.

Remember with every screw up you learn quickly! ;)
 
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