Three RGB amp boards assembled by hand, two Mega Drive 3BP boards and one simple N64 amp, as a first attempt at using the hot air station for most of the work instead of an iron. Pads tinned, flux applied, components placed and reflowed, with the larger parts finished by iron. The Mega Drive boards went into a PAL and an NTSC Mega Drive 2, the N64 board into an NTSC console.
4 years ago, I hand assembled a couple of RGB amps for fun. I had done so before but entirely with a soldering iron, this time I was going to try my hand at using the hot air station, for the majority of the process. 2 MD 3BP boards and 1 N64 simple RGB one.
The previous picture showed that I tinned all pads. Then, I fluxed the board and placed on the components (1st pic), in their respective positions, to then apply hot air. 2nd pic shows the board post-reflow and the 3rd pic shows the amp soldered on by iron. This would later go into an NTSC N64.
Same deal here, 1st pic flux application to tinned board, 2nd pic components placed, 3rd pic boards post-reflow and 4th pic completed boards with the bigger tantalums and MLCC and the ICs. All ready for installation. These would go into my 2 Mega Drive 2 units, 1 PAL and 1 NTSC.
If you want to see a younger me fool around with the hot air station and the surface tension of the solder pulling components in, here's a video of me reflowing a board. An older, wiser me, can easily tell I overdid it with the solder on some of the pads. 😄
