Homebrew PCBs

I've soldered up a lot of prototype boards without solder mask but
never a milled board.  The solder will stick anywhere your soldering
iron touches.  I had to do fine pitch IC's and 0201/0402 parts and I
made a mess a few times.  You might need to try a different tip so you
are only heating the pad and not letting it touch the ground plane
too.  The only other way is to solder mask your board or as Jamie
said, increase your isolation distance.  I have been using Weller ETR
1/16" Narrow Screwdriver tips for years and I love them.
http://www.hmcelectronics.com/product/Weller/ETR  They give me the
control to put the soldering iron exactly where I want even in
confined spaces.  I have a variety of soldering tips but this is my go
to one for most jobs.  When soldering I rarely add flux for most
standard parts but when doing re-work I always use lots of flux.  When
I took my IPC J-STD-001 test I found out I was using too much solder.
It really doesn't require that much to make a good joint.

--
Erik L. Knise
Seattle, WA


On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 8:13 AM, 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
>