Wave: Use electric skillets for dip (wave) soldering and tin/lead plaiting. The basic problem with home plating is that a roundness forms that causes the leads to slip off the pads. You can use wick to remove the rounded tops. "Mopping" the solder over the board with an iron can result in uneven solder height which can prevent all the chip leads from contacting the pads. Again, solder wick can remove "bumps" One problem with dip soldering is that the package picks up moisture and turns to steam if heated rapidly as in wave soldering. This can cause delamination of the plastic from the die or leadframe. I've observed the problem appearing as blown output pins. Smaller packages are rarely a problem. Typically you can pre-bake the chip for 12-24 hours at low enough temperatures to prevent rapid generation of steam (Altera suggests 12hrs at 260F). Reflow: Toaster ovens or hardware store hot air guns for smt reflow. Preheat: Preheat the board to about 100 C (212 F) with an electric pancake griddle, keeping everything except the area being worked on covered with cardboard to avoid burns. (Commercial hot air soldering equipment uses preheat from 100 to 150 C AFIK) The other reason for preheat is to drastically reduce the amount of time hot air must be applied to complete the soldering operation, significantly reducing thermal stresses. BTY: You can use hot melt glue guns to make plastic injection molded parts. James Newton, webmaster http://get.to/techref jamesnewton@geocities.com 1-619-652-0593 phoneÊ -----Original Message----- From: pic microcontroller discussion list [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Wagner Lipnharski Sent: Thursday, August 05, 1999 1:55 PM To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: [OT] Home Made SMD Soldering Just to refresh the idea. Where can I find a small and economic oven to do home-smd-soldering? Wagner.