EZ1073 Issue

[Chrishoward936]

Hey All,

I am building a 1073 1U and I accidentally soldered a bridge between R86 and R137 (the connections on the bottom are so close to each other). I tried to scratch off the extra solder (dumb I know but here we are) and now it looks like I scratched it way too much. See the attached pic. It looks like these too are connected from the schematic though. From the pic does it look like it will be fine? I just don’t want to waste a ton of time building the rest if I jacked it up to bad. Thanks in advance. [/img]

 

[Bo Deadly]

If you took the time to post a pic then I will assume you what an honest critique. Many of the solder joints are a little sloppy. You can see the solder is lumpy, has a valley or is over filled. This is due to either not enough heat, not enough solder or too much solder respectively.

Boards with big ground planes like this oue soak up a lot of heat so you need to let the iron sit there for a few seconds to thoroughly heat up the area before feeding in more solder so that the solder wicks evenly throughout the joint. This is quadrupley true of holes connected to the ground plane (this is why the ones on the left edge of your pic are really lumpy).

The best technique IMO is to put just enough solder on the flat edge of the pencil tip so that the blob makes contact with both the hole plating and the part terminal. Hold it there for a full two seconds or so or until you see the solder start to wick into the joint, which ever is less (usually it will not wick into the joint without adding fresh solder because it's flux is what makes the solder really flow well into the joint). Then feed more solder into the wet blob but use it to lead solder into the far side of the joint. Wet solder conducts really well so use that to pull the solder into other parts of the joint. But only use enough solder to completely enclose the hole. Too little and you'll get concave areas. Too much and it will balloon out the other side or both sides.

PS: When your done, use some 99% isopropyl with a Q-tip to clean up the excess flux. But it might take a few passes because the first pass at least will just smear it around rather than remove it. I use a lens wipe with some plastic tweezers to polish the board generally as a final step. If a circuit has some really high impedance spots (more than 1M), excess flux can actually affect circuit performance. It also collects dirt. And blobs of flux all over just look bad.

 

[mjrippe]

^Very good soldering advice.^

But to answer your question, you are fine to go ahead with the build.  The two points are connected by a trace so even the bridge would have been fine.  Do NOT try to redo those connections now because you have exposed some of the ground plane and it would be easy to create a new bridge shorting them to ground.

 

[Whoops]

It seems you just exposed a little bit of the copper on the ground plane, no big harm.
You can spray a bit of pcb varnish in that spot if you want to protect the copper from oxidizing in the future.

But go ahead no harm done

 

[Chrishoward936]

Sorry for the late reply but thank you for your responses! This is only my third project and I’m still learning to solder. My last project was better but I feel like something is wrong with my iron. It seemed as though the heat fluctuated a lot. Sometimes it heated fine and the solder would flow perfect and I got the right amount of solder. Other times it wouldn’t melt then all of the sudden I had a huge balloon of solder. I held it in place for about 6 seconds on the joints. The iron is fairly old and is a cheaper Weller iron with a dial from 0 to 5 and I honestly have no idea how hot it was. I do have Kester 3.3% 44 Lead solder. It’s also fairly old but seems to be working fine. My flux spilt in the storage box so I’ve been working without for the first bit.

I did order flux and a new iron with a temperature reading on the front and it’s supposed to control the temperature better. So with your advice and my new iron I hope to have better joints the rest of the way through. If anyway of you have advice for fixing the balloon joints I’m all ears. I was just going to wick it away with some braid.

Anyways thanks for the advice and replies I can’t wait to hear this bad boy!

 

[scott2000]

I feel like something is wrong with my iron. It seemed as though the heat fluctuated a lot. Sometimes it heated fine and the solder would flow perfect and I got the right amount of solder. Other times it wouldn’t melt then all of the sudden I had a huge balloon of solder. I held it in place for about 6 seconds on the joints. The iron is fairly old and is a cheaper Weller iron with a dial from 0 to 5 and I honestly have no idea how hot it was.

making sure to clean and tin the iron very frequently seems to help with goofiness..

 

[Whoops]

Never use a cheap Iron. Only use a good one it makes the worlds difference.

For Solder use always 60/40 solder, it's flows very nicely and it's great for DIY work

My favorite Irons and what I recommend is JBC:

https://www.jbctools.com/3302040-30st-soldering-iron-product-468.html

 

[scott2000]

Sounds like the WLC100 being described...if so, it's not that bad imo

 

[Chrishoward936]

Ok, good to know about the 60/40, I saw it but wasn’t sure how good it was compared to what I’ve been using. Ive been usng the 3.3% 44 since that’s what RedCo Audio carried. I will pick some 60/40 up for the next project and see if I notice the difference.

You are correct it was a WLC100 and it worked nice on my first couple of projects but I’m assuming something happened to it over the years. I just got my WE1010NA today and my joints look awesome. The heat is consistent now and I think that was my main issue. I should have taken a picture so you could see the difference. I’ll try to remember to get one tomorrow. Thanks for all the advice!

Quick question. What is the best place to get quality wire to hook up the IEC outlet? I read in this forum that apexjr.com was the best bet. Any thoughts?

 

[Chrishoward936]

For anyone interested, the two rows towards the bottom were done with the new iron. My joints are looking a lot better.

 

[FelixT]

I also need some help with my EZ1073 and will post a new thread!

 

[mjrippe]

Looking good! My only comment would be to use a *little* more solder to get that perfect cone shape. It is tricky because sometimes it looks right and then you pull the iron away and the solder "sucks in" to the hole. But practice makes perfect and you are doing everything right

 

[Whoops]

If you never used 60/40 solder before then you will love it and will see it's much easier to flow and make perfect solder joints

 

[scott2000]

And grab an OptiVisor to see your work on another level if you haven't already..

Looking good..

 

[Chrishoward936]

Dang this are all good suggestions. I will pick up some 60/40 for my next project I’m almost finished with this one. I’ve never heard of an OptiVisior but I defly need something the help me see better! I do have one question though. I was dipping some capacitors in SRA Rosin Paste Flux and now I realized there is flux residue on top of the PCB under the capacitor. Should I just de solder the components and clean it then re solder them? Or just try to clean what I can under the components?

 

[Whoops]

I don't use any flux at all for many years and my solders are perfectly good.
Solder flux just makes a huge mess.
When you try the 60/40 flux you will see that you dont need to use any external flux at all, just soldering Iron and solder, thats it

 

[mjrippe]

To answer your question, isopropyl alcohol will remove the extra flux.

 

[Whoops]

isopropyl alcohol is good, but this stuff is even better:

 

[Klimaschewski]

When I first started soldering, these tutorials really helped me understand how to solder. Especially how to approach the soldering points.
I would like to share this with you ;-)
Mr Carlsons Lab
EEVblog

 

[Chrishoward936]

just a little update, I finished the 1073 and it sounds amazing! I appreciate everyone’s helps.