Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

Hi, all,

Just recently, I had a chance to mill my own PCBs with a script that exports a toolpath from Eagle Cad to a Modela milling machine. The resulting boards are gorgeous! Unfortunately, the soldering has become very difficult.

Because very thin traces are being cut to isolate the actual wire connections from the ground plane, it's fairly easy to spill some solder onto the trace and have a hard time cleaning off the resulting bridge.

I wanted to ask, when milling your own boards from copper-clad board, how do you control the soldering process? Are their techniques to get the solder to stay on just the pad that's been isolated from the ground plane? Should I look for a precise flux pen that will dribble just a teeny bit of flux onto the pad?

Many thanks, everyone, and I look forward to your input!

Sincerely,

Poofjunior