through hole

21 Articles

Fail Of The Week: How Not To Re-Reflow

October 10, 2019 by 30 Comments

There’s no question that surface-mount technology has been a game-changer for PCB design. It means easier automated component placement and soldering, and it’s a big reason why electronics have gotten so cheap. It’s not without problems, though, particularly when you have no choice but to include through-hole components on your SMT boards.

[James Clough] ran into this problem recently, and he tried to solve it by reflowing through-hole connectors onto assembled SMT boards. The boards are part of his electronic lead screw project, an accessory for lathes that makes threading operations easier and more flexible. We covered the proof-of-concept for the project; he’s come a long way since then and is almost ready to start offering the ELS for sale. The PCBs were partially assembled by the board vendor, leaving off a couple of through-hole connectors and the power jack. [James]’ thought was to run the boards back through his reflow oven to add the connectors, so he tried a few experiments first on the non-reflow rated connectors. The Phoenix-style connectors discolored and changed dimensionally after a trip through the oven, and the plastic on the pin headers loosened its grip on the pins. The female header socket and the power jack fared better, so he tried reflowing them, but it didn’t work out too well, at least for the headers. He blames poor heat conduction due to the lack of contact between the board and the reflow oven plate, and we agree; perhaps an aluminum block milled to fit snugly between the header sockets would help.

Hats off to [James] for trying to save his future customers a few steps on assembly, but it’s pretty clear there are no good shortcuts here. And we highly recommend the electronic leadscrew playlist to anyone interested in the convergence of machine tools and electronics.

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Fail Of The Week: How Not To Light Pipe

August 19, 2019 by 17 Comments

You’d think that something made out of glass and epoxy would transmit a decent amount of light. Unfortunately for [Jeremy Ruhland], it turns out that FR4 is not great light pipe material, at least in one dimension.

The backstory on this has to do with #badgelife, where it has become popular to reverse mount SMD LEDs on areas of PCBs that are devoid of masking, allowing the light to shine through with a warm, diffuse glow – we’ve even featured a through-PCB word clock that uses a similar technique to wonderful effect. [Jeremy]’s idea was to use 0603 SMD LEDs mounted inside non-plated through-holes to illuminate the interior of the board edgewise. It seems like a great idea, almost like the diffusers used to illuminate flat displays from the edge.

Sadly, the light from [Jeremy]’s LEDs just didn’t make it very far into the FR4 before being absorbed – about 15 mm max. That makes for an underwhelming appearance, but all is certainly not lost. Valuable lessons about PCB design were had, like exactly how to get a fab to understand what you’re trying to do with non-plated holes and why you want to fence the entire edge of the board in vias. But best of all, [Jeremy] explored what’s possible with Oreo construction, and came away with ideas for other uses of the method. That counts as a win in our book.

Components Cut In Half Reveal Their Inner Beauty

April 2, 2019 by 7 Comments

We rarely take a moment to consider the beauty of the components we use in electronic designs. Too often they are simply commodities, bought in bulk on reels or in bags, stashed in a drawer until they’re needed, and then unceremoniously soldered to a board. Granted, little scraps of black plastic with silver leads don’t exactly deserve paeans sung to their great beauty – at least not until you cut them in half to reveal the beauty within.

We’ve seen a little of what [Tube Time] has accomplished here; recall this lapped-down surface-mount inductor that [electronupdate] did a while back. The current work is more extensive and probably somewhat easier to accomplish because [TubeTime] focused mainly on larger through-hole components such as resistors and capacitors. It’s not clear how the sections were created, but it is clear that extreme care was taken to lap down the components with enough precision that the inner structures are clearly visible, and indeed, carefully enough that some, most notably the LED, still actually work. For our money, though, the best looking cross-sections are the capacitors, especially the electrolytic, for which [Tube Time] thoughtfully provides both radial and axial sections. The little inductor is pretty cool too. Some of the component diagrams are annotated, too, which makes for fascinating reading.

Honestly, we could look at stuff like this all day.

Thanks to [Stuart Rogers] for the tip.

Why Wait? Just Plate Your Own PCB Vias

November 2, 2017 by 34 Comments

[Jan Mrázek] is a pro when it comes to rolling his own PCBs. He can crank out a 6/6 mil double-sided PCB in 45 minutes flat. As a challenge to his prowess, he decided to experiment with plating through-hole PCBs at home, because sometimes you just can’t wait for China to deliver the goods.

The key here is to make a non-conductive surface—the walls of holes drilled in a sheet of copper clad–conductive. While there are some established ways of doing this at home, the chemicals are difficult to source. When his local supplier started stocking colloidal graphite paint, which is used to prevent ESD and fix non-working remote control buttons, he decided to try it.

[Jan] drilled up a board with holes ranging from 0.1mm up to 8mm, polished it, and gave it an acetone bath. He sprayed each side with graphite and cured it at 100 °C for 20 minutes. At this point, wall hole resistance measured 21 Ω. [Jan] wet-sanded away the graphite and set up an electroplating bath. Right away, he could see a layer of copper forming on the holes. After 90 minutes, he polished the board again and separated the vias to prepare for the real test: solder. This time, every hole except the smallest size reported a resistance of 0.1 Ω. But they all sucked solder through the vias, making this experiment a success.

[Jan] concluded that this is a simple and effective process, but is rarely worth the effort. We wonder how the simplicity of this method compares to drilling wells instead of holes, filling them with conductive ink, and then drilling the rest of the via.

Via [Dangerous Prototypes]

Have You Ever Tried Desoldering Needles?

April 3, 2017 by 58 Comments

If you are an electronics enthusiast who has a tendency to hoard junk because it Might Be Useful Someday, you may well have a significant experience when it comes to desoldering. Why order that component, when you’ve got one on this old board?

So we’ve become experts in removing old components from dead PCBs, so when it comes to desoldering techniques you might think we’ve seen it all, there’s nothing new to learn. Then along comes [fede.tft], with a tip of a desoldering tool that’s new to us. The video below the break from [MSylvain59] demonstrates the needles in action, what do you think? Have any of you used a desoldering needle?

This is a set of tools you might use to desolder a through-hole component with a wire-end poking out beneath the board. The idea is that as stainless steel needles the solder won’t adhere to them, so you can select the appropriate size and use it to push out the lead from below.

We remain to be convinced, as it seems to be a slightly more fiddly way to do what we’ve used a small screwdriver for to lever from above the board for years, but it’s always worth talking about a tool that could be a useful new weapon in our armoury.

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Blob Grid Array Technique Mounts Board-To-Board

August 16, 2016 by 29 Comments

[Howard Matthews] mills his own PCBs, and man, does he hate drilling through-holes. Manually changing the bits between engraving and drilling after isolation routing? What is this? The stone age? [Howard] decided to rethink his DIY PCB manufacturing process, and came to one essential conclusion: Only a fraction of these drills are actually necessary.

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By Christian Taube - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1503038

Tools Of The Trade – Through Hole Assembly

July 22, 2016 by 31 Comments

In our last installment of Tools of the Trade, we had just finished doing the inspection of the surface mount part of the PCB. Next in the process is the through hole components. Depending on the PCB, the order may change slightly, but generally it makes more sense to get all the SMT work done before moving to the through hole work.

Through hole used to be the standard, but as the need for size reduction and automation increased, SMT gained favor. However, there are still a lot of reasons to use through hole components, so they aren’t going away entirely (at least not any time soon). One of the biggest advantages of THT is mechanical strength, which makes it better suited for connectors than SMT. If you’ve ever popped a microusb connector off a PCB by breathing on it heavily, you’ll understand. So, how do we most efficiently get through hole components on a PCB, and how do the big boys do it?

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