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Assembly Tools

What you will need to assemble your Jaguar version 0.7-alpha PCB

There are two methods for SMD assembly, one is with a soldering iron, the other requires a reflow oven. A reflow oven can be easily made from cheap counter top toaster ovens. NEVER EVER use a oven that is used for cooking food! TOXIC FUMES are given off during the reflow process and they will CONTAMINATE ANY FOOD prepared in them.

• Common tool requirements :

  • Temperature controlled soldering iron (fine tip) for PCB work
  • An ordinary 35 Watt soldering iron for soldering wires
  • Side cutters (preferrably flush cut)
  • Long nose pliers
  • Tweezers (pointy type)
  • Fine gauge solder 0.5mm for surface mount applications
  • Solder wick
  • Anti-static work surface (other substitutes are aluminium foil, anti static component bags)
  • Digitial Multimeter (DMM) and/or oscilloscope, or any other appropriate voltage and current testing device.
  • Saleae Logic or Logic16 logic analyzer for testing with the BenchTest firmware.
  • Bench power supply or 12V battery.

Reflow oven, method 1

The reflow assembly process is rated 6/10 for difficulty of assembly :

• Method 1 tool requirements :
  • Reflow oven
  • Optical magnifier (4x optical power reading glasses from the $1 store work well)
  • Syringe of solder paste
  • Cotton swabs (for cleanup of extra solder paste)

Soldering iron, method 2

The process of assembly with a soldering iron is rated 8/10 for difficulty of assembly :

Follow Method 1 procedure to install the components, but use you fine tipped soldering iron to apply heat to each leg of the component one at a time. Make sure to go over each joint with a high optical power magnifying glass to ensure you don't have any solder bridges.

• Method 2 tool requirements :

  • Bench mounted magnifying glass or 4x optical power reading glasses.

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