Homebrew PCBs

Hi Jim,

Are you talking about hand soldering or wave soldering?

For hand soldering, I only remove toner from areas I want to 
solder.  The remaining solder becomes my poor man's solder mask (and 
not that good because an active flux will solder through it).  It 
should protect from oxidation, though oxidation is more cosmetic 
than a reliability problem.  Once you have an oxidized layer, that 
slows it down for the rest of the underlying copper.

I saw tinning solution available from HMC Electronics (might not 
have the name right).  You could tin the copper with solder using 
your regular solder and solder wick - labor intensive.  Or you could 
use solder paste and a toaster oven, but you'll probably fill any 
through holes.

I just remove toner from areas I'm going to solder; just before I 
solder so oxidation isn't a problem.  No special cleaning other than 
the acetone I use to remove the toner.  The flux in the solder does 
the rest.  Can't remove toner as accurately or well as I'd like; but 
by the time I get that far, I'm more interested in getting it 
assembled so I can test.

Regards,
Dennis

--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "jriggen55" <jriggen55@...> 
wrote:
>
> How do you coat the copper traces to keep down the oxidation and 
> improve solderability?
> 
> I haven't made a PC board in 25 years, but back then, we put the 
PCB in 
> a solder bath with a peanut oil top layer to keep down the dross.  
This 
> was time consuming and costly (solder was expensive in that 
quantity).
> 
> How is it done today?  I saw some mention of 'tin-it' in one of 
the 
> threads here but cannot find it on the web.
> 
> This is a great group and it's quite interesting comparing how 
home-
> brew PCB's are done today and how we did it 25 years ago.  Isn't 
> technology great?!!
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Jim
>