I normally tin all the exposed copper before soldering the components in place, just to prevent corrosion of the bare copper. I do get some solder bridges which are fairly easy to clean up with an exacto knife. I usually lightly sand the board to remove rough edges on the milled areas which helps the solder pull away from the isolation cuts. One way to avoid problems with bridges is to avoid narrow isolation cuts under components during layout of the board. It is fairly easy to fix bridges that are easily seen, but when under components they are very difficult to see or fix.
Bob
--- On Thu, 9/27/12, poofjunior <seeifyoucanmeetme@...> wrote:
From: poofjunior <seeifyoucanmeetme@...>
Subject: [Homebrew_PCBs] Soldering Tricks for Milled Boards
To: Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, September 27, 2012, 9:13 AM
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
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