Late last year we bought two ovens. We have used this one 4-5 times, and now it has just been sitting. We don’t need two of them. Thus we have decided to sell the one we used the least. The unit is in perfect working order.
If interested take a peek at it here.
Annnnnnnnd sold. Damn… I just bought a scope yesterday, but you just had to go and tempt me!
So anybody have a favorite place to buy solder stencils?
Just seen this and its gone already :(. @ Justin - Isnt that the same as the one you have?
I have his bigger brother T962A
Sorry man, I lost out on a ridiculously good Craigslist deal this weekend and am still sore over it… so when I saw this there was all of 1.7 seconds hesitation before clicking buy!
@ FireyFate - hahah no worries man. I’m in the uk so shipping would have been horrendous.
PCB Pool does free stainless 5mil stencils with every PCB order, and I find their prices to be quite competitive.
Hmmm… Not sure I agree with you on the competitive pricing. I just quoted 50 pieces and it came out 4x more expensive than what I paid at DFRoboto.com and that apparently wasn’t big enough an order to qualify for the free stencil 
They do have an interesting option to place a free RFID tag. I suppose that’s their way of identifying boards rather than printing codes on the board 
Yeah DFRobot’s prices pretty much blew my mind. 10 two layer 10cm x 10cm boards shipped to the US for under $50 is crazy good. I almost don’t want to publicize it because I’m afraid they’ll get overwhelmed with orders 
I guess I didn’t realize that I need a custom stencil… for some reason I was thinking for hobbyist use you just use generic ones, like a TSSOP stencil or a 0603 stencil to apply the paste for each part. Of course now that I think about it that would be pretty hard to do without smearing what is already done…
I plan on making some changes to my board design, so I guess Ill wait until I do that before getting a stencil made. Im going to knock out a couple more by hand of the current board for testing in different configurations. Still a great deal on the oven, and itll be ready for me when I can get the time!
Still, a stencil is really only what I’d call “essential” if you’re mass producing - if you just need to make 10 and put a half dozen misc components onto a board, a quick dab of paste on each pad is not overly hard to do. So if you’re a module freak like Justin, absolutely you’ll see the difference if you didn’t have a stencil, but if you’re just doing a few-off and no particular need to do 10 at a time, you’re probably not that bad off if you don’t have the stencil.
Following on from Brett, it’s actually a little more complicated
Even if you are doing small lots (2 or 3) a stencil can be a real life-saver.
You can relatively easily dab solder paste from a syringe to do 0603 and SOIC style parts. Once you get to complicated land patterns (pushbuttons, connectors) or fine-pitch (e.g. the 0.6mm pitch on the STMF32 parts or FPC connectors) a solder stencil gives much better results during reflow.
I guess the short takeaway is smaller parts require more accurate paste volumes.
I just use masking tape to set up a stencil for short runs (<10 boards). There’s a load of youtube tutorials for this.
( I should also add, using a stencil is very rewarding, you can feel like a ‘real’ board producer)
I found it too hard to control the amount of solder I was applying using the syringe needle. After watching this video, I’ve been using a toothpick every since and it’s worked great. That being said, I will be getting a stencil the next time I need to do a lot of the same board. I find the toothpick method very efficient and there’s almost no cleanup like you would have with a stencil.
Well, I have a parts order in with Digikey to build my next few boards… so maybe I’ll give the toothpick thing a try. I definitely feel like I could get more control that way. My board isn’t too bad… five TSSOP-6s, some 0603s, gadgeteer sockets.
I have some Kester EP256 63/37 paste I got from Amazon. I tried it the first time I hand soldered my TSSOP parts… is it normal that you have to press the plunger super hard to get the paste through the syringe? It took way more force than I was expecting so I’m wondering the consistency isn’t right with the stuff I got.
Thanks for the continued education guys.
Yep, that’s fairly normal. Especially, if you’re keeping it in the fridge like you should be. It’s thick stuff and a tiny needle. That’s the main reason I had such a hard time controlling the application while using the syringe. With the toothpick you only worry about rubbing in the right place and not about squeezing the tube. Also, the thing that took me the most to get used to when I first used solder paste was figuring out how much to dab on. The stuff grows as it warms up. So, put on less than you think you’ll need and it’ll probably turn out fine.
I tend to let my paste warm up before I use it to help stop it growing while I’m placing the components. Like Ian says its amazing how much it grows if you put it on cold even if you use a stencil.
Get it to room temp before applying it …
We bought one of these, made all the difference in the world.
We have tried may types of paste as well. The best we have found so far has been from ChipQuiK.
I think that’s part of why the toothpick method is nice. You only have to get a little puddle of paste to room temp rather than wait for the entire syringe to warm up.
@ JDAL Systems - share more details about that dispensing unit. Looks very interesting.