I've used cool-amp a number of times in the past, and a little goes a
very long way - I found it very cost effective.
However, being silver, it tarnishes - relatively quickly. Once tarnished
it's quite painful to solder, so I found I had to use the cool amp, then
put on a coat of circuit lacquer immediately to keep it clean.
My other fav approach that's much cheaper; I got one of those camp
cooktops that takes the disposable gas cylinders, bought a $2 frypan
from a discount store and a few sticks of plumbers solder, the good old
60/40.
Stick the solder in the pan and get cooking (In a very very well
ventilated area such as outside in my back yard.
I made a scraper from a thin piece of circuit board about half as wide
as the frypan and put a handle on it at 90 degrees.
Made up my own flux in a spray bottle from citrc acid granules from the
supermarket and water, can use it with impunity. Just spray away on the
freshly etched board, nice and safe for you to get on hands etc without
worry.
Once the solder's hot and in a nice big pancake in the frypan, a quick
spray of the flux on the solder to get it's surface tension up, then use
the scraper to wipe off the muck floating on top (lead oxides?). Holding
the circuit board with a suitable implement just sit it on the solder.
It'll hiss and bubble around for a couple of seconds, then lift off well
before it starts to burn and delaminate.
I have a windscreen squeegee on hand to give a few quick wipes on the
board to take off excess solder, and it's all done with a very neat flat
solder plated surface.
If it's not quite coated completely, another hit of flux and a dip, with
another wipe. Can do this as many times as needed so long as the board
doesn't get overheated. With a little practice this is very quick,
usually needing only one go on each side of the board.
The solder definitely fumes, so keep your head back and preferably use
protection. I used to do this when I was younger and poorer and didn't
use any protection at all, other than holding my breath when I was close
to the pan (I can hold my breath comfortably for quite some time, so
wasn't worried about passing out and falling into the solder!)
I haven't tried this technique with lead free solder, although there's
no reason it wouldn't work other than probably needing a better flux
that's less cooling.
Cheers,
Andrew
On 15/08/13 4:04 PM, James wrote:
>
> On 15/08/13 18:00, David wrote:
> >
> > Hi
> > Do any of you people here know of a quick and cheap way to tin copper
> > PCB tracks before populating the board?
> > With all the modern chemicals around these days theirs bound to
> > something out there
> > In the past have used the manufactured stuff which you just put in a
> > bath for a while and job done but its to expensive.
> >
> There is basically that (tinnit, liquidtin), and a product called "Cool
> Amp" http://www.cool-amp.com/cool_amp.html
>
> I've never found any reasonable "home brew" recipe for such a product.
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
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