Hi Neil, There are LONG threads on the PICLIST archive about using a toaster oven as a reflow oven for surface mount soldering. Please check there, you'll find the real lowdown on how to make one pretty quickly. As I remember, there's not much to it. Look at www.digikey.com for a "Surface Mount Solder Kit". This has little syringes for applying solder paste and solder flux. They are indispensible for surface mount soldering. Throw away your rolls of wire solder - they are too coarse. -- Lawrence Lile ----- Original Message ----- From: "Neil Gandler" To: Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 5:12 AM Subject: [EE]: Surface Mount soldering techniques (need some tips) I need to assemble a few prototype boards with mostly surface mount components. I have done quite a bit of surface mount soldering over the years, but I am looking for ideas to make my work more efficient. For previous boards, I would solder each pin of an IC to its pad, adding a bit of solder as I applied the soldering gun with its fine tip. I talked to my PCB manufacturing house and they said they could plate the PCBs with up to 1mil of solder. If I go with specificying 1mil of solder plating, I am wondering if soldering the pins of an IC will be as simple of touching the soldering tip to the pin to melt and "reflow" the solder plate below, without adding any additional solder. This of course would make for a quicker, neater connection and eliminates the chance of bridging two adjacent pins. Can anyone give me some insight to whether this method works? If I go with this method, do I need to add flux to the soldering area? Has anyone made this method work with a heat gun instead? Any soldering tips would be greatly appreciated. I may have to do several boards, and its not cost effective to have them soldered by a company with a pick-n-place machine. Thank you all for your time. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList mailto:piclist-unsubscribe-request@mitvma.mit.edu -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList mailto:piclist-unsubscribe-request@mitvma.mit.edu