I'm not too familiar with CAD, SMD technology and so on, so not sure this technique will apply in this case or solve your bridging problem.
I've been successfully soldering components to small pads by heating only the component wire. The solder itself heats the pad. It's neat, quite easy to control and results are pretty consistent.
Here's a breakdown of the two handed process.which takes about 3-seconds - not long enough to fry the component.
With the component in place, the soldering iron tip is applied with the flat against the wire just above the pad and without touching it.
Apply the pre-fluxed solder on the opposite side of the wire. As the solder begins to melt, remove the solder and at the same time rotate the soldering iron so the flat faces downward, still without touching the pad. What effectively happens, the solder flows down the wire, heats the pad and forms a nice neat joint. Snip the excess wire.
The whole process can be imagined as a short sequence. "Iron, solder, turn, done" The rest is timing.
Peter
MM5PSL
Shetland Islands
--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "poofjunior" <seeifyoucanmeetme@...> wrote:
>
> 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
>