C15 and C38 around the crystal should have the same value (18p), they have however a different color in your video. C15 looks surprisingly like C32 (that should be 100nF), so C15 is likely wrong. They are responsible for the oscillator. Please check and replace these components, they will likely fix your problem.
If you are going to do many projects like this, do get: Flux (helps in getting the tin to behave) A wedge tip for the iron (easier handling, can be laid flat aginst chips/solder wicks) If it's not, get a temprature regulated one (any from china should do) I agree on your conclusion, and JCL got a PCB assembly service that would likely be of great help. By just getting the tiny (resistors & capacitors) stuff out of the way should help a lot, even if you have to place some few parts yourself.
Loved your video, but I do have a bit of a recommendation. After working on some complicated SMD circuits, I decided I was tired of hand soldering, and moved towards DIY reflow. I ended up getting 2 solid state relays and used them to drive a 2 element toaster oven with an arduino for temperature profiles. After a bit of programming, everything worked flawlessly. Now I just order stencils along with the PCB's, spread the paste over the board, stick the components on, and bam, perfect boards every time. I would love to see your take on a DIY reflow oven, and it would also help to improve the quality and quantity of boards you can produce. Anyways, keep up the great work!
Hey would you mind recommending what type of heating element to use ?? I have ordered an LQFP-144 ic and honestly getting nervous as the delivery date is approaching
Hat's of to your patience!! Right from understanding, finding, ordering and waiting to actually soldering a complex to debug circuit !! Thanks to this series, we have a reference for what's it's actually like to DIY a said thing... Love this series. Good work Scott.
Maybe if you make/buy an SMD to breadboard adaptor for the uC and program it before soldering it. Place it on a breadbaord, add the oscillator and everything, and program it, At least you know that is not the uC with the problem. Great video and pretty complicate proejct!
I would definitely recommend you using a much smaller solder. I use 0.5mm solder for pretty everything, and occasionally used 0.3mm on really small SMD, but if you add extra flux then it makes all soldering much easier and tidier. (so I haven't needed to use anything smaller than 0.5mm for years.) Also, try a small "chisel" tip on the iron, say around 2-3mm wide. The sharp corners of the chisel can be used to solder very small joints like SOIC and QFP pins, while still having the larger surface area of the whole tip for through-hole joints etc. For both uses, you should get far better thermal contact, plus the flat tip will retain a nice level amount of solder rather than a big blob. Again though, and I can't stress how much this helps, but - FLUX! :p I realise there is flux in the core of almost any electronics solder, but a good no-clean liquid (or paste) flux is invaluable, especially for SMD. (Maybe not quite as much flux as Sir Louis of Rossmann uses, but hey, he's an awesome solderer, so I can't really complain there. lol)
6:56 You should never need to "paint on" the solder like that if the pin / pad is sufficiently heated by the iron first. If you heat both the component and pad for a bit less than 1 second (with the iron touching both at once), then feed in a tiny amount of solder to where the pin / pad / iron meet, it should just flow nicely. If you notice that it's not quite enough solder, you can just add a bit more while still holding the iron in place. Trying to move around the solder around on the board too much, dropping / painting the already-molten blob from the iron, or just heating the solder for more than about 2-3 seconds will tend to "boil off" most of the flux, and prevent the solder from flowing / sticking properly. Hope this comes across as constructive only. I'm not the best solderer in the World by any means, nor officially qualified, but I do think these few suggestions will help immensely. ;)
One of the main things though - that solder looks HUGE. hehe It must be at least 0.7mm, maybe even 1mm? Try 0.5mm, and stick with it for a while when soldering SMD stuff. Even for through-hole, it's not so thin that you're constantly feeding in more solder, and it gives far greater control over the amount.
Here's a superb video on SMD soldering techniques... (it may look like he's using a bevelled tip here, but it actually has a slight flat on each side. Either way, I would still recommend a 2, 2.5, or maybe 3mm chisel tip. It masks life a whole lot easier. :p ) th-cam.com/video/3NN7UGWYmBY/w-d-xo.html
Good video and attempt! Ignore the internet couch pros here who are all trying to point out mistakes. I REALLY appreciate your willingness to show how it actually went, rather than editing it to show only the most perfect solder joints and successes. Thank you
Check your C15 cap next to the crystal. It looks darker. Darker ones are usually in nano or micro Farad. Thats way to much for a crystal to start swinging. That seems to have wrong value if connected to crystal pin. The other cap is brighter. Thats ususlly pico farad and may be ok for crystals, but depends on crystal and its load capability.
If you want to go at this lvl of electronics you should order soldering stencils. Apply solderpaste to the entire board and reflow cook it in your oven. You can beef up the Mosfets soldering later on if you need to.
Hey Scott, in order to solder the LQFP package as you did, use some liquid flux. Spread it on the pins and use some solder wire on the iron tip to individually solder the pins. It is very effective. I had tried the solder paste method at first but it caused shorting of various pins.
the rule is: if it is sold ready made, buy it. It is very, very rare that it is worth it to make it your own. Exception is when you want to make it yourself just to make it yourself. Thank you for your time and efforts :)
What I love about your channel is that you make videos to beginners but to me as an electronics engineer, is always nice to see your approach to the solution of HW problems. You're doing great!
I think you would have had much better luck if you used copious amounts of a good organic water soluble flux, and solder with water soluble flux core. It cleans up very easily with a small amount of soap and hot water. It looked to me like you didn't use any flux except for what was in the solder, this is why you had trouble soldering the close pitch SMD chips. Here flux is your friend, I drag solder those fine pitch ICs all the time it's fairly easy with a lot of flux, and a little technique. If you want to you can send me one of those that you didn't get working, and I'll troubleshoot it for you. Have a great day, and thanks for the great videos. Glenn
If you failed.... well, that can’t be good news for everyone else! At least you’re honest about the whole process, some people don’t like to admit their failures. This video shows a lot of maturity....and yet, it’s also kind of the way you’ve always done things. Which is awesome btw. Stay awesomer 👏😁
would you do a troubleshooting video? it would be really interesting! i am thinking about building my own esc for a while, i want to make a super beefy power output maybe with parallel mosfets and active coolling, for a really large bldc. Btw another cool diy or buy video would be a stereo amplifier! (class a/b, maybe? :)
GreatScott! I too have soldered the VESC on my own. The 10uF caps were really a problem so I got myself 4.7uF and soldered 2 on top of each other. Has the same effect. On mouser they have other MOSFETs with +0.2mOhm more rds on so I got these. Soldering took me 3 days since I could only solder in class since I don't own a soldering station. My first power on was horrible too. The VESC wasn't drawing any amps. Troubleshooting took about 2 weeks. I broke the MCU while measuring the voltage on the voltage regulator. Had to resolder it. I managed to programm the new MCU but the VESC wasn't working, so I thought it would be due to the unsoldered Drv ground pad. So I got a new chip. Resoldering the new one, the VESC wasn't working. After some time i desoldered the capacitor that is on the output of the buck converter and found out the the cap was broken. After that everything worked just fine. All this took some time but I had to get it going since it was my Abitur project. But the one VESC that isn't working, are you sure you soldered the groundpad? Are the voltages all right? Get KiKad and open the pcb file, with that you can see all the traces and perhaps find the error. Perhaps a pad of the MCU isn't soldered right. Troubleshooting my VESC made me examine every inch of it till i found that faulty capacitor.
Thanks for trying, your channel is awesome!! One clue I've learned by pain: don't solder everything, do it block by block, if you know what I mean. Place each part, test, then build another block. That save a lot of time and money!
I would suggest ordering a smt stencil when making several boards. Costs about 6$ at JLC and saves a lot of headache and combined with a hot air/oven soldering pretty much guarantees nice and working boards. Lazy as I am (or willing to pay to save time) I also order the boards as panels (another 6$) so I can apply the soldering paste to all the boards in one go. Thank you for the time you spend on making these videos so perfect and interesting!
Should have had a stencil made using the top paste gerber layer, you had the solder paste for it. Also that hot air gun action might not have done some of the components too well either.
Thank you for this, I have been watching the VESC project for quite a long time. Unsure if I wanted to build this or buy. You have definitely answered that question. Kudos to you.
I’m glad you tried with two boards, I wouldn’t have thought to do that! I really appreciate your openness, even when things don’t go according to plan. Keep up the great work!!
You should practice soldering more, this way you can avoid such a hassle. Just pretin the pads, put the component on with tweezers and hold it while heating it up with the heat gun. Works perfectly fine. Don't forget flux of course.
It's projects like this that make me want to stay away from any electronic project that has to interface with a computer. It's both a good and bad thing to be biased against such projects that have such a high chance of just not working for reasons that cannot be seen and that can cause a project to fail. I say it's good because I am learning much more basic analog circuitry, I'm at the point where I have designed a schematic for a BLDC motor driver that doesn't use a microprocessor or even a semi-complex IC. Your videos motivated me to learn to do things differently, because it seems like every project you make utilizes an arduino and programming and I have neither an arduino or programming knowledge and I wanted to see you break away from the easiest (and honestly most efficient) way of making your projects just work. I wanted to see you go farther, deeper into the math and the datasheets to design analog circuits to make a project without a single line of code or microprocessor or complex chip. Thanks to your videos I have now completed a first schematic for my own extremely basic motor driver featuring 12 transistors, 6 N channel mosfets, 6 generic diodes, 6 capacitors, 6 zener diodes, and 36 resistors and I will be attempting to assemble a prototype based on what I have learned. I know you probably won't take project ideas especially from the comments of a video that is over three years old, but if you are interested in seeing more of my learning process I would love to share it with you. I'll probably send it to you on patreon if the prototype works at all. Thank you for creating these awesome videos, you are an inspiration to us all.
The way you solder the SMD ICs is to float the pins with heaps of solder, then tilt the board and flow the soldering irons along the pins and the big mass of solder will flow with the iron tip until the last pin. it'll look like factory soldering. take it from a guy who used to work oir Radio Shack repair centers for many years and this was my trick until board were simply replaceable many many years ago
I also build a vesc from scratch and had some problems with the USB as well. I commented out some code and then it worked, if some failure occurs before usb is initiliazed you don't get usb. In my case, i didn't connect the battery power which caused the problem. Also, if you're on linux you can check with lsusb or dmesg what happened when you plugged in the VESC. If you get a usb device but no com-port / ttyAMC0, it probably means theres a problem with the software or some other failure that inhibts the initialization of usb. If you can still flash the uC, and the two capacitors and oscillator are functional, it probably means the issue lies with your computer. Hope that helps.
Add MORE flux!!! It will be much easier to solder those smd components, they will flow nicely and won't bridge/short as easily too. Also you need to program the chips before it will be recognized...
Holy crap add more solder! I recommend you get some of those 5mm thick sticks used for soldering roofing iron, and possibly a flamethrower to melt it all, don't hold back.
A simple tip before first powering up any new circuit, first measure resistance between ground and Vcc! If you have lets say 2 Ohm you know it will release the magic smoke if you power it up without current limitation.
The best method I have found with soldering SMD components is to use a paper stencil to apply the solder paste onto the pads. It has worked great for me every time and the results look perfect! To cut out the stencil I use a laser cutter at my school, but you can get a small laser for around $100 and attach it to your 3D printer, which would also be a great video!
I’d love to see a DIY or BUY segment on a multi-battery automatic capacity checker - for someone who had a bunch of 18650s they need to check, but don’t have the time to actively run tests many times. Ideally something that you can place several 18650s in and it will individually charge and discharge as needed to get the final charge capacity in mAH.
You did not use soldering flux.... Watch Louis Rossmann 's channel.... Just soldering flux, heat gun, soldering wire & soldering iron ...... You can so a professional job.... Could be way batter than you did hear... But... Hai... It still works....
Agreed with this. I was wondering why someone never mentioned him here before. It's all about the flow! And about the com port issue, your controller might have damaged due to short circuits. They're too fragile with voltages.
6 ปีที่แล้ว +2
I was about to make this comment. After watch months of Louis soldering, this soldering looks too dry and painful to make. Don't give me wrong, I'm no expert at all, but it seems like Scott had a hard time soldering this smd's.
Keep in mind that 90% of power transistors at Chinese online stores, especially aliexpress ones, are fake (cheaper, less powerful crystals than claimed). So even with firmware working there is a chance for it to blow itself up under heavy loads.
Totally agree! Those of us in the industry knows what's behind the scene. Nowadays, the counterfeit chips and components might even spot genuine looking markings, packings etc. Electrolytic capacitors are the worst. Certain PC Motherboard manufacturer actually loaded fake caps unto the boards. 5 container loads of them, and all go harsh harsh to prevent embarrassment. Well, anyway, they expect no one will use a PC board for more than 2 years, so its ok for the caps to burst and vent while in service after that...As a rule of thumb, I'll treat ALL components from Aliexpress as counterfeits and supposed I need to use a 3A diode, I'll select a 5A one to accomplish the task.
I do PCB design and bringup. You’ll have a much easier time with a microscope, quality tweezers, smaller solder, a flux pen and a quality iron with a micro tip. Everything on this board can be done without reflow. You really have to take your time under a microscope and make everything perfect for this to be worth it. Also that 3 hour time estimate is mighty conservative!
You can also buy the Maytech version on aliexpress for 89$ + shipping. I was lucky that Maytech was at some exhibition/fair in Germany when I ordered because they offered fast UPS shipping with no extra cost. Build and soldering quality is decent, solder is very shiny. So far it works well (survived few short circuts).
@GreatScott! Thank you for yet another excellent DIY or BUY video. Thanks for taking one for the team too! With so many components to solder it's definitely a BUY for me, even though I solder really well. 😋
It's quite sad that you spent so much money and nothing worked. I thought about building that vesc too, but now i see that it is too complicated, thanks for the lesson, keep going with the channel!
I made a simple reflow oven from an old toaster/convection oven. SMD parts are actually way easier than through hole if you do them this way. Just a suggestion. I really enjoyed your project.
Love all the comments about the soldering. Unless it's a short or a bad joint somewhere I doubt the soldering is the problem. More likely the MCU isn't running because the oscillator isn't running. I'm not sure what all these people think throwing a bucket of flux over it is going to achieve.
You really need to use more flux and get some fine point tweezers instead of that garbage. Also get some finer solder if you have problems with too much solder on the pads. A flat head iron tip works much better compared to the pointy tip for me at least. Hopefully these tips help some beginners
AppleAssassin Some SMD soldering can be tricky, yes, but things can be improved a huge amount just by a few technique changes. The diameter of solder used here is pretty huge, and it doesn't look like any extra liquid flux was used, which is basically a prerequisite for smaller SMD like the QFP and SOIC chips. It honestly doesn't take long at all to learn those few methods, swap out the evil bevelled soldering tip for a small 2-3mm wide chisel, buy some no-clean liquid flux etc. It's also about not sufficiently heating both the pad and pin, then feeding in a smaller amount of solder. The solder should ideally be fed into the contact area between the component and pad, and not "brushed on" nor moved around with the iron too much. Mr Carlson did a good video on soldering technique recently. Although it was more for much larger through-hole stuff, he explains things well.
yeah his soldering tip was way too big, I got the same soldering iron and normally there is a thinner one. Sad not to see the german perfectionism here xD
It was fun to watch you having discovered the vesc :) Welcome to potential pain, and potential high reward :) Careful configuring that thing. You can make it self destruct through misconfiguration. I had to replace the mosfet driver once as a result of my own stupidity. Current limit while testing, that's my best advice. But at some point you also have to let the motor controller profile your motor for FOC. Thar be dragons, depending on how large you go lol. Benjamin Vedder did an amazing job. Love that guy so much for designing and sharing this very complete system.
Yikes! I was hoping it would work... I always wondered if anyone would DIY their own VESC. And when I saw this video come up, I immediately clicked it :) Thanks for the great video as always!
FirstPrinciple r sadly soldering the original vesc is a fairly difficult task as the PCB is a 4 layer and pretty compact. Others and I have successfully soldered them before but every so often is a lemon that decides to be a pain. If not the mcu refusing to show up then it runs but even then we sometimes get one that blows the drv8301 and a few traces connected to it
I would definitely suggest spending the extra $7 on a stencil in future. Anything with less than 1mm pitch is generally worth it to me, especially with that sort of component count. Then you would have the option of hot air, hand soldering...or if you're making SMD PCBs often getting a T-962 for ~£150-200 (they work well so long as you only use the middle of it).
I think you should use some soldering flux for these small SMD components next time. I tried it and really makes a difference :) It may cause a little mess but it's easy to clean off with some alcohol or aceton.
Things are so compact in there. You can just created your own pcb layout using their schematic. By that you can alter the board size and parts placement. By the way great video...!
In all honesty, you can cut down on time, waste, and mistakes by purchasing a solder paste stencil for a project such as this. It means you get the proper amount of solder for each component, the benefit of speedy assembly and soldering, and the bonus of less solder bridges.
Yeah... If GreatScott! can't succeed, I'm not even gonna think about trying. lol. Thank you for posting this! Probably save a few ppl many hours of frustration XD
In additional to all of the excellent advice others have posted about SMD soldering, I would like to add that you should solder and inspect while using an eye-loupe * try 1.5X or 2X magnification). At age 78 with lousy eye sight I still can solder 144 pin TQFP's with 0.5mm pitch - it's a great age-leveler! 🙂 That said, I would still buy a commercially available ESC, unless I need one that has specs that are not available in the market.
I suggest you buy some liquid flux. When you bridge pins on surface mount IC add flux, then place the solder braid over the flux, then heat with the iron, works well for me.
Surprisingly it was not so hard to assemble these, just a more accurate soldering and checking with microscope. Worked the first time:) But it indeed is more costly and time consuming way to do it. Can stretch a little bit of the cost by using different fets, but not so much.
Please do the same with an e bike controller.. so much thing you can learn us also the e bike community needs this flexibility a lot.. there is so much limits and obsolescence cases on that subject.. Anyway thanks for your existence man!!!!!! Keep those coming.
maybe try again with solder paste , a stencil and a reflow (toaster) oven? that also gives me an idea for a video, DIY reflow oven with stuff that the pro ones have like ramp up and down times maybe an arduino with some mosfets to make a timer and dimmer circuit?
Use plenty of flux (ideally jelly flux) and drag soldering method on big ic's and you can forget about hot air. you have to clean the boards afterwards with IPA or acetone. Keep up the good work!
Solder flux, preferably that does not need cleaning, preferably in some sort of solder flux application device fluxpen or syringe. Steady hand and cleaning afterwards, and "VOILA". Clean the board afterwards, technical alcohol should usually do the job. I personally love opensource projects, there is a lot of thing that could learn, see, or reuse. but it is always more complex approach, and usualy more controllable afterwards when You manage to successfully finish the project. When You have a decision between two same projects, finished and tested and development documentation one, I would personally always get the finished and tested if the price margin is not so catastrophic, it keeps You from lot of problems, and the documentation and projects give You the same insight and possibility to adopt whatever possible. Usually there are more than one factor in decision but simply if open source and proprietary have similar characteristics, and time is not of crucial importance, prebuilt and tested open hardware project is better than just open source documentation and projects, that is better than proprietary one. And also, proprietary is fast in development, not always better by itself but they usually have SUPPORT, and be aware of possible HIDDEN COSTS of start and maintaining the product. Sincerely, Nenad
I probably would've spent the money to make a stencil and cook the board in the oven to solder. It might save some headache. You would just need to look at the temperature profiles for the components which might be sensitive.
Buy makes the most sense when using low current ESC’s they are bountiful however when you need a 400a 50v capable esc than we’re talking about $400 and up to purchase.
Saiful Nurhasan FYI, it's actually a waste of time. The creator gets the same money whether you skip the ads or not, as long as an ad is served, the creator gets the money for it. Used to do the same thing😅
About soldering... I see you have ersa i- con soldering handle. This is good soldering station only you must increase temperature. For that pcb with lot of copper and two side layer pcb, at least 350°C to set. I have the i-con pico (80W) and much better results when soldering smd components even with classic thin wire without extra flux. I use stannol thin 0.7mm thick. Sorry for bad english...
Awesome video! Been watching the channel for a while now it was so cool to see my right up about the bootloader installation in there! And also be careful with those AliExpress FET's I've personally only ever received fakes from China. And another great source of legitimate components I use lot is Arrow.com they have great prices. P.S. just bought a VESC for $63 on RCMOMENT but there still on sale on banggood for like $65.
The minimum cost of VESC's has dropped a bit lately thanks to the Chinese manufacturer Flipsky now also producing them. You can get them on banggood/aliexpress for around 75 euros. Search for FSESC or somethink like flipsky skateboard ESC. Also hobbyking has them in stock again under SK8 ESC for around the same price.
You could have tried to make some nicer welds in the first place, but yeah it's pretty tough to get it right! Mad props for trying it! Please let us know how that maytech VESC is holding up
If the boards are single sided, you would have much more success with a hot plate. Just paste all your pads, place the components and throw it on a hot plate at 250 degrees C. Use tweezers to poke the components into compliance. Don't keep it on the hot plate more than 10-15 seconds after the paste flashes and the solder turns shiny. You can reheat it a few times before you start to destroy sensitive components.
Not sure if you are aware about BLHeli series of Escs. Fully configurable, support different protocols and BLHeli_32 (closed source) supports telemetry.
C15 and C38 around the crystal should have the same value (18p), they have however a different color in your video. C15 looks surprisingly like C32 (that should be 100nF), so C15 is likely wrong. They are responsible for the oscillator. Please check and replace these components, they will likely fix your problem.
I wonder if that worked for him...
Dude, nice find!
Yeah, unfortunally scott's soldering isn't that great...
@@samuellourenco1050 yeah.. and also lots of cold joints, voultar would cringe watching this video
@@geovani60624 i saw alot of cold solder
If you are going to do many projects like this, do get:
Flux (helps in getting the tin to behave)
A wedge tip for the iron (easier handling, can be laid flat aginst chips/solder wicks)
If it's not, get a temprature regulated one (any from china should do)
I agree on your conclusion, and JCL got a PCB assembly service that would likely be of great help.
By just getting the tiny (resistors & capacitors) stuff out of the way should help a lot, even if you have to place some few parts yourself.
Loved your video, but I do have a bit of a recommendation. After working on some complicated SMD circuits, I decided I was tired of hand soldering, and moved towards DIY reflow. I ended up getting 2 solid state relays and used them to drive a 2 element toaster oven with an arduino for temperature profiles. After a bit of programming, everything worked flawlessly. Now I just order stencils along with the PCB's, spread the paste over the board, stick the components on, and bam, perfect boards every time. I would love to see your take on a DIY reflow oven, and it would also help to improve the quality and quantity of boards you can produce. Anyways, keep up the great work!
good to know! ty.
Nice work. Will it heat pop tarts still?
Hey would you mind recommending what type of heating element to use ??
I have ordered an LQFP-144 ic
and honestly getting nervous as the delivery date is approaching
@@TheAnimeist No. An oven used for soldering or other chemical processes can never be used for food.
@@user2C47 What if I wanted to poison someone with a cooked pop tart? 😀
Hat's of to your patience!! Right from understanding, finding, ordering and waiting to actually soldering a complex to debug circuit !! Thanks to this series, we have a reference for what's it's actually like to DIY a said thing... Love this series. Good work Scott.
Thanks mate :-)
Maybe if you make/buy an SMD to breadboard adaptor for the uC and program it before soldering it. Place it on a breadbaord, add the oscillator and everything, and program it, At least you know that is not the uC with the problem.
Great video and pretty complicate proejct!
Electronoobs how in the hell is this comment posted 1 day ago??!!
TH-cam red?
Jan Daniel Javier he is a patreon supporter
Patreon supporters pay to support the channel and noobs is a patron as am I
I think only problem is time who will spend more than 10 hours of prototyping and soldering process.. just to save 30 dollars.
I would definitely recommend you using a much smaller solder.
I use 0.5mm solder for pretty everything, and occasionally used 0.3mm on really small SMD, but if you add extra flux then it makes all soldering much easier and tidier.
(so I haven't needed to use anything smaller than 0.5mm for years.)
Also, try a small "chisel" tip on the iron, say around 2-3mm wide.
The sharp corners of the chisel can be used to solder very small joints like SOIC and QFP pins, while still having the larger surface area of the whole tip for through-hole joints etc.
For both uses, you should get far better thermal contact, plus the flat tip will retain a nice level amount of solder rather than a big blob.
Again though, and I can't stress how much this helps, but - FLUX! :p
I realise there is flux in the core of almost any electronics solder, but a good no-clean liquid (or paste) flux is invaluable, especially for SMD.
(Maybe not quite as much flux as Sir Louis of Rossmann uses, but hey, he's an awesome solderer, so I can't really complain there. lol)
6:56
You should never need to "paint on" the solder like that if the pin / pad is sufficiently heated by the iron first.
If you heat both the component and pad for a bit less than 1 second (with the iron touching both at once), then feed in a tiny amount of solder to where the pin / pad / iron meet, it should just flow nicely.
If you notice that it's not quite enough solder, you can just add a bit more while still holding the iron in place.
Trying to move around the solder around on the board too much, dropping / painting the already-molten blob from the iron, or just heating the solder for more than about 2-3 seconds will tend to "boil off" most of the flux, and prevent the solder from flowing / sticking properly.
Hope this comes across as constructive only.
I'm not the best solderer in the World by any means, nor officially qualified, but I do think these few suggestions will help immensely. ;)
One of the main things though - that solder looks HUGE. hehe
It must be at least 0.7mm, maybe even 1mm?
Try 0.5mm, and stick with it for a while when soldering SMD stuff.
Even for through-hole, it's not so thin that you're constantly feeding in more solder, and it gives far greater control over the amount.
Here's a superb video on SMD soldering techniques...
(it may look like he's using a bevelled tip here, but it actually has a slight flat on each side. Either way, I would still recommend a 2, 2.5, or maybe 3mm chisel tip. It masks life a whole lot easier. :p )
th-cam.com/video/3NN7UGWYmBY/w-d-xo.html
Very good information
Thank you very much
Good video and attempt! Ignore the internet couch pros here who are all trying to point out mistakes. I REALLY appreciate your willingness to show how it actually went, rather than editing it to show only the most perfect solder joints and successes. Thank you
Humility is cheaper than the lesson. Thanks for trying!
th-cam.com/video/rvhkNlh1YuE/w-d-xo.html
@@manpreet6311 don't click the link. It's Just spam
@@Casperdroid5 it isnt spam bro . I am not promoting anyone. You can check by clicking it
Check your C15 cap next to the crystal. It looks darker. Darker ones are usually in nano or micro Farad. Thats way to much for a crystal to start swinging. That seems to have wrong value if connected to crystal pin. The other cap is brighter. Thats ususlly pico farad and may be ok for crystals, but depends on crystal and its load capability.
If you want to go at this lvl of electronics you should order soldering stencils. Apply solderpaste to the entire board and reflow cook it in your oven. You can beef up the Mosfets soldering later on if you need to.
Hey Scott, in order to solder the LQFP package as you did, use some liquid flux. Spread it on the pins and use some solder wire on the iron tip to individually solder the pins. It is very effective. I had tried the solder paste method at first but it caused shorting of various pins.
the rule is: if it is sold ready made, buy it. It is very, very rare that it is worth it to make it your own. Exception is when you want to make it yourself just to make it yourself. Thank you for your time and efforts :)
What I love about your channel is that you make videos to beginners but to me as an electronics engineer, is always nice to see your approach to the solution of HW problems. You're doing great!
you are one of the best youtubers that do real projects for education and not only for views thank you
I think you would have had much better luck if you used copious amounts of a good organic water soluble flux, and solder with water soluble flux core. It cleans up very easily with a small amount of soap and hot water.
It looked to me like you didn't use any flux except for what was in the solder, this is why you had trouble soldering the close pitch SMD chips. Here flux is your friend, I drag solder those fine pitch ICs all the time it's fairly easy with a lot of flux, and a little technique.
If you want to you can send me one of those that you didn't get working, and I'll troubleshoot it for you.
Have a great day, and thanks for the great videos.
Glenn
Any Amazon link recommendation for flux?
If you failed.... well, that can’t be good news for everyone else! At least you’re honest about the whole process, some people don’t like to admit their failures. This video shows a lot of maturity....and yet, it’s also kind of the way you’ve always done things. Which is awesome btw. Stay awesomer 👏😁
have you tried some isopropanol and a toothbrush? it seems like you have a lot of spent flux there!
Yes. For the repair I cleaned the PCB quite a bit. Did not help though.
would you do a troubleshooting video? it would be really interesting! i am thinking about building my own esc for a while, i want to make a super beefy power output maybe with parallel mosfets and active coolling, for a really large bldc. Btw another cool diy or buy video would be a stereo amplifier! (class a/b, maybe? :)
GreatScott! I too have soldered the VESC on my own. The 10uF caps were really a problem so I got myself 4.7uF and soldered 2 on top of each other. Has the same effect. On mouser they have other MOSFETs with +0.2mOhm more rds on so I got these. Soldering took me 3 days since I could only solder in class since I don't own a soldering station. My first power on was horrible too. The VESC wasn't drawing any amps. Troubleshooting took about 2 weeks. I broke the MCU while measuring the voltage on the voltage regulator. Had to resolder it. I managed to programm the new MCU but the VESC wasn't working, so I thought it would be due to the unsoldered Drv ground pad. So I got a new chip. Resoldering the new one, the VESC wasn't working. After some time i desoldered the capacitor that is on the output of the buck converter and found out the the cap was broken. After that everything worked just fine. All this took some time but I had to get it going since it was my Abitur project.
But the one VESC that isn't working, are you sure you soldered the groundpad? Are the voltages all right? Get KiKad and open the pcb file, with that you can see all the traces and perhaps find the error. Perhaps a pad of the MCU isn't soldered right. Troubleshooting my VESC made me examine every inch of it till i found that faulty capacitor.
7:35 you need learn more
How to repair bridge and excess solder > watch?v=OaBRak0HnQs
+Faza Indriani
It's easier to use full links...
th-cam.com/video/OaBRak0HnQs/w-d-xo.html
All of my motivation comes from this channel. Appreciate from the bottom of my heart.
I appreciate seeing the failures as well as the successes. Good for you.
Thanks for trying, your channel is awesome!! One clue I've learned by pain: don't solder everything, do it block by block, if you know what I mean. Place each part, test, then build another block. That save a lot of time and money!
I would suggest ordering a smt stencil when making several boards. Costs about 6$ at JLC and saves a lot of headache and combined with a hot air/oven soldering pretty much guarantees nice and working boards. Lazy as I am (or willing to pay to save time) I also order the boards as panels (another 6$) so I can apply the soldering paste to all the boards in one go. Thank you for the time you spend on making these videos so perfect and interesting!
I appreciate your "DIY or Buy" series. This one looks costly for you, but I hope you know that we appreciate your efforts.
Should have had a stencil made using the top paste gerber layer, you had the solder paste for it. Also that hot air gun action might not have done some of the components too well either.
Alucard Pawpad Yeah, I’ve had a few inductors go open circuit from using a soldering iron on them.
Why use soldering iron when you have hot air soldering station?
Thank you for this, I have been watching the VESC project for quite a long time. Unsure if I wanted to build this or buy. You have definitely answered that question. Kudos to you.
I’m glad you tried with two boards, I wouldn’t have thought to do that! I really appreciate your openness, even when things don’t go according to plan. Keep up the great work!!
This is probably my fav DIY or buy ep, coz you had to go out and order all the parts, it will make me reconsider my on DIY or buy choices in future :D
You should practice soldering more, this way you can avoid such a hassle. Just pretin the pads, put the component on with tweezers and hold it while heating it up with the heat gun. Works perfectly fine. Don't forget flux of course.
look into the recent traction in VESC development, particularly in the onewheel community... you won't be disappointed.
Respect for even trying to build the board, I don't think I would be that brave :) And for posting your struggle...
Keep up the great channel!
It's projects like this that make me want to stay away from any electronic project that has to interface with a computer. It's both a good and bad thing to be biased against such projects that have such a high chance of just not working for reasons that cannot be seen and that can cause a project to fail. I say it's good because I am learning much more basic analog circuitry, I'm at the point where I have designed a schematic for a BLDC motor driver that doesn't use a microprocessor or even a semi-complex IC. Your videos motivated me to learn to do things differently, because it seems like every project you make utilizes an arduino and programming and I have neither an arduino or programming knowledge and I wanted to see you break away from the easiest (and honestly most efficient) way of making your projects just work. I wanted to see you go farther, deeper into the math and the datasheets to design analog circuits to make a project without a single line of code or microprocessor or complex chip. Thanks to your videos I have now completed a first schematic for my own extremely basic motor driver featuring 12 transistors, 6 N channel mosfets, 6 generic diodes, 6 capacitors, 6 zener diodes, and 36 resistors and I will be attempting to assemble a prototype based on what I have learned.
I know you probably won't take project ideas especially from the comments of a video that is over three years old, but if you are interested in seeing more of my learning process I would love to share it with you. I'll probably send it to you on patreon if the prototype works at all.
Thank you for creating these awesome videos, you are an inspiration to us all.
Please don't give up on this project.i really want to see it work
The way you solder the SMD ICs is to float the pins with heaps of solder, then tilt the board and flow the soldering irons along the pins and the big mass of solder will flow with the iron tip until the last pin. it'll look like factory soldering. take it from a guy who used to work oir Radio Shack repair centers for many years and this was my trick until board were simply replaceable many many years ago
I think he deserves a like for his hard work
I also build a vesc from scratch and had some problems with the USB as well. I commented out some code and then it worked, if some failure occurs before usb is initiliazed you don't get usb. In my case, i didn't connect the battery power which caused the problem. Also, if you're on linux you can check with lsusb or dmesg what happened when you plugged in the VESC. If you get a usb device but no com-port / ttyAMC0, it probably means theres a problem with the software or some other failure that inhibts the initialization of usb. If you can still flash the uC, and the two capacitors and oscillator are functional, it probably means the issue lies with your computer. Hope that helps.
Add MORE flux!!! It will be much easier to solder those smd components, they will flow nicely and won't bridge/short as easily too.
Also you need to program the chips before it will be recognized...
Holy crap add more solder! I recommend you get some of those 5mm thick sticks used for soldering roofing iron, and possibly a flamethrower to melt it all, don't hold back.
A simple tip before first powering up any new circuit, first measure resistance between ground and Vcc! If you have lets say 2 Ohm you know it will release the magic smoke if you power it up without current limitation.
The best method I have found with soldering SMD components is to use a paper stencil to apply the solder paste onto the pads. It has worked great for me every time and the results look perfect! To cut out the stencil I use a laser cutter at my school, but you can get a small laser for around $100 and attach it to your 3D printer, which would also be a great video!
I’d love to see a DIY or BUY segment on a multi-battery automatic capacity checker - for someone who had a bunch of 18650s they need to check, but don’t have the time to actively run tests many times.
Ideally something that you can place several 18650s in and it will individually charge and discharge as needed to get the final charge capacity in mAH.
You did not use soldering flux.... Watch Louis Rossmann 's channel.... Just soldering flux, heat gun, soldering wire & soldering iron ...... You can so a professional job.... Could be way batter than you did hear... But... Hai... It still works....
Agreed with this. I was wondering why someone never mentioned him here before. It's all about the flow!
And about the com port issue, your controller might have damaged due to short circuits. They're too fragile with voltages.
I was about to make this comment.
After watch months of Louis soldering, this soldering looks too dry and painful to make.
Don't give me wrong, I'm no expert at all, but it seems like Scott had a hard time soldering this smd's.
Keep in mind that 90% of power transistors at Chinese online stores, especially aliexpress ones, are fake (cheaper, less powerful crystals than claimed). So even with firmware working there is a chance for it to blow itself up under heavy loads.
Totally agree! Those of us in the industry knows what's behind the scene. Nowadays, the counterfeit chips and components might even spot genuine looking markings, packings etc. Electrolytic capacitors are the worst. Certain PC Motherboard manufacturer actually loaded fake caps unto the boards. 5 container loads of them, and all go harsh harsh to prevent embarrassment. Well, anyway, they expect no one will use a PC board for more than 2 years, so its ok for the caps to burst and vent while in service after that...As a rule of thumb, I'll treat ALL components from Aliexpress as counterfeits and supposed I need to use a 3A diode, I'll select a 5A one to accomplish the task.
@@rontan8433 The famous China factor you have to add to everything.
Very applicable "DIY or Buy" episode for most hobbyists!
I do PCB design and bringup. You’ll have a much easier time with a microscope, quality tweezers, smaller solder, a flux pen and a quality iron with a micro tip. Everything on this board can be done without reflow. You really have to take your time under a microscope and make everything perfect for this to be worth it. Also that 3 hour time estimate is mighty conservative!
You can also buy the Maytech version on aliexpress for 89$ + shipping. I was lucky that Maytech was at some exhibition/fair in Germany when I ordered because they offered fast UPS shipping with no extra cost. Build and soldering quality is decent, solder is very shiny. So far it works well (survived few short circuts).
@GreatScott! Thank you for yet another excellent DIY or BUY video. Thanks for taking one for the team too! With so many components to solder it's definitely a BUY for me, even though I solder really well. 😋
I watched to many videos today.My head hurts,but your video was worth it!
Is it possible to use it like ODrive for the position control? And if yes, which is better?
It's quite sad that you spent so much money and nothing worked. I thought about building that vesc too, but now i see that it is too complicated, thanks for the lesson, keep going with the channel!
Thank you for this video. I have been considering building my own ESC for more powerful BLDC motors. But seeing your experience made me change my mind
I'm so glad you've shown this as a "failed" project. I bet you were furious with it though!
I made a simple reflow oven from an old toaster/convection oven. SMD parts are actually way easier than through hole if you do them this way.
Just a suggestion.
I really enjoyed your project.
Love all the comments about the soldering. Unless it's a short or a bad joint somewhere I doubt the soldering is the problem. More likely the MCU isn't running because the oscillator isn't running. I'm not sure what all these people think throwing a bucket of flux over it is going to achieve.
Hello from Cuba, in my univercity we love your videos.
Awesome. Thanks for watching.
You really need to use more flux and get some fine point tweezers instead of that garbage. Also get some finer solder if you have problems with too much solder on the pads. A flat head iron tip works much better compared to the pointy tip for me at least. Hopefully these tips help some beginners
That soldering looks very bad.
smd soldering is very difficult even for people who've done soldering for years
AppleAssassin
Some SMD soldering can be tricky, yes, but things can be improved a huge amount just by a few technique changes.
The diameter of solder used here is pretty huge, and it doesn't look like any extra liquid flux was used, which is basically a prerequisite for smaller SMD like the QFP and SOIC chips.
It honestly doesn't take long at all to learn those few methods, swap out the evil bevelled soldering tip for a small 2-3mm wide chisel, buy some no-clean liquid flux etc.
It's also about not sufficiently heating both the pad and pin, then feeding in a smaller amount of solder.
The solder should ideally be fed into the contact area between the component and pad, and not "brushed on" nor moved around with the iron too much.
Mr Carlson did a good video on soldering technique recently. Although it was more for much larger through-hole stuff, he explains things well.
He needs to use a different soldering tip for SMD components. Something like a chisel tip.
yeah his soldering tip was way too big, I got the same soldering iron and normally there is a thinner one. Sad not to see the german perfectionism here xD
Yes, and stop adding more solder to it. The little on a chisel tip is more than enough.
It was fun to watch you having discovered the vesc :) Welcome to potential pain, and potential high reward :) Careful configuring that thing. You can make it self destruct through misconfiguration. I had to replace the mosfet driver once as a result of my own stupidity. Current limit while testing, that's my best advice. But at some point you also have to let the motor controller profile your motor for FOC. Thar be dragons, depending on how large you go lol. Benjamin Vedder did an amazing job. Love that guy so much for designing and sharing this very complete system.
Been thinking about doing this for while. Good to have this knowledge going in if I decide to give it a try.
Yikes! I was hoping it would work... I always wondered if anyone would DIY their own VESC. And when I saw this video come up, I immediately clicked it :) Thanks for the great video as always!
FirstPrinciple r sadly soldering the original vesc is a fairly difficult task as the PCB is a 4 layer and pretty compact. Others and I have successfully soldered them before but every so often is a lemon that decides to be a pain. If not the mcu refusing to show up then it runs but even then we sometimes get one that blows the drv8301 and a few traces connected to it
I love these esc's, they're fecking great in higher end combat robotics
I would definitely suggest spending the extra $7 on a stencil in future. Anything with less than 1mm pitch is generally worth it to me, especially with that sort of component count. Then you would have the option of hot air, hand soldering...or if you're making SMD PCBs often getting a T-962 for ~£150-200 (they work well so long as you only use the middle of it).
Hey Sccott, you should have asked for stencil along with PCBs. It would have been easier to apply the right amount of solder when using heat gun.
no flux given....
I think you should use some soldering flux for these small SMD components next time. I tried it and really makes a difference :) It may cause a little mess but it's easy to clean off with some alcohol or aceton.
This channel has so much quality...
Makes me feel better about my 3 junked DIY atmega328p boards.
Things are so compact in there. You can just created your own pcb layout using their schematic. By that you can alter the board size and parts placement. By the way great video...!
In all honesty, you can cut down on time, waste, and mistakes by purchasing a solder paste stencil for a project such as this. It means you get the proper amount of solder for each component, the benefit of speedy assembly and soldering, and the bonus of less solder bridges.
Yeah... If GreatScott! can't succeed, I'm not even gonna think about trying. lol. Thank you for posting this! Probably save a few ppl many hours of frustration XD
In additional to all of the excellent advice others have posted about SMD soldering, I would like to add that you should solder and inspect while using an eye-loupe * try 1.5X or 2X magnification). At age 78 with lousy eye sight I still can solder 144 pin TQFP's with 0.5mm pitch - it's a great age-leveler! 🙂 That said, I would still buy a commercially available ESC, unless I need one that has specs that are not available in the market.
Well after soldering this project you must be a soldering master now lol
I suggest you buy some liquid flux. When you bridge pins on surface mount IC add flux, then place the solder braid over the flux, then heat with the iron, works well for me.
Although both controllers did not work, belive me it is a great job!
Surprisingly it was not so hard to assemble these, just a more accurate soldering and checking with microscope. Worked the first time:) But it indeed is more costly and time consuming way to do it. Can stretch a little bit of the cost by using different fets, but not so much.
Hey Scott, do you know what component on the VESC handles the PPM signal?
Please do the same with an e bike controller.. so much thing you can learn us also the e bike community needs this flexibility a lot.. there is so much limits and obsolescence cases on that subject.. Anyway thanks for your existence man!!!!!! Keep those coming.
maybe try again with solder paste , a stencil and a reflow (toaster) oven?
that also gives me an idea for a video, DIY reflow oven with stuff that the pro ones have like ramp up and down times
maybe an arduino with some mosfets to make a timer and dimmer circuit?
you have awesome handwritting
Use plenty of flux (ideally jelly flux) and drag soldering method on big ic's and you can forget about hot air. you have to clean the boards afterwards with IPA or acetone. Keep up the good work!
use mineral spirit to clean flux and never look back, acetone stinks and IPA does not do the job very well. I have no clue why IPA is recommended.
Solder flux, preferably that does not need cleaning, preferably in some sort of solder flux application device fluxpen or syringe. Steady hand and cleaning afterwards, and "VOILA". Clean the board afterwards, technical alcohol should usually do the job.
I personally love opensource projects, there is a lot of thing that could learn, see, or reuse. but it is always more complex approach, and usualy more controllable afterwards when You manage to successfully finish the project. When You have a decision between two same projects, finished and tested and development documentation one, I would personally always get the finished and tested if the price margin is not so catastrophic, it keeps You from lot of problems, and the documentation and projects give You the same insight and possibility to adopt whatever possible.
Usually there are more than one factor in decision but simply if open source and proprietary have similar characteristics, and time is not of crucial importance, prebuilt and tested open hardware project is better than just open source documentation and projects, that is better than proprietary one. And also, proprietary is fast in development, not always better by itself but they usually have SUPPORT, and be aware of possible HIDDEN COSTS of start and maintaining the product.
Sincerely,
Nenad
Wow, I was really rooting for the DIY method. It makes sense, though.
I probably would've spent the money to make a stencil and cook the board in the oven to solder. It might save some headache. You would just need to look at the temperature profiles for the components which might be sensitive.
Buy makes the most sense when using low current ESC’s they are bountiful however when you need a 400a 50v capable esc than we’re talking about $400 and up to purchase.
dont skip the ads, only for you.
keep up
Saiful Nurhasan FYI, it's actually a waste of time. The creator gets the same money whether you skip the ads or not, as long as an ad is served, the creator gets the money for it. Used to do the same thing😅
Best to just support him directly with patreon.
Abhishek Anil it helps if you click the ad and spend about 20 seconds on there
*I didn't
*just
@c6amp oh! I misunderstood the system then... Oops
I am not the first.
.
Thumbs up for honesty
Consider using additional flux during soldering. Any gel flux is usually at least "all right".
About soldering... I see you have ersa i- con soldering handle. This is good soldering station only you must increase temperature. For that pcb with lot of copper and two side layer pcb, at least 350°C to set. I have the i-con pico (80W) and much better results when soldering smd components even with classic thin wire without extra flux. I use stannol thin 0.7mm thick. Sorry for bad english...
love this guys videos so well spoken...
I appreciated all the detail- especially on your soldering technique and complications. Thank you 🙏
the biggest hint for SMD soldering: USE MORE FLUX!
things should flow in place by themselves mostly.
You need a wave tip for your soldering iron - it's easy to solder IC's with it. Stencil form jlcpcb can be useful
Awesome video! Been watching the channel for a while now it was so cool to see my right up about the bootloader installation in there! And also be careful with those AliExpress FET's I've personally only ever received fakes from China. And another great source of legitimate components I use lot is Arrow.com they have great prices.
P.S. just bought a VESC for $63 on RCMOMENT but there still on sale on banggood for like $65.
The minimum cost of VESC's has dropped a bit lately thanks to the Chinese manufacturer Flipsky now also producing them. You can get them on banggood/aliexpress for around 75 euros. Search for FSESC or somethink like flipsky skateboard ESC. Also hobbyking has them in stock again under SK8 ESC for around the same price.
Nice video. And never mind the failure
You could have tried to make some nicer welds in the first place, but yeah it's pretty tough to get it right!
Mad props for trying it!
Please let us know how that maytech VESC is holding up
man....you are the guy!!!! great video congrats!!!
If the boards are single sided, you would have much more success with a hot plate. Just paste all your pads, place the components and throw it on a hot plate at 250 degrees C. Use tweezers to poke the components into compliance. Don't keep it on the hot plate more than 10-15 seconds after the paste flashes and the solder turns shiny. You can reheat it a few times before you start to destroy sensitive components.
Not sure if you are aware about BLHeli series of Escs. Fully configurable, support different protocols and BLHeli_32 (closed source) supports telemetry.
Can u please make a video on diy or buy For soldering iron without station plz reply?
Purvi Srivastava why the hell would you want to make a soldering iron? They cost nothing.
Always completely cover your esc connectors with heatshrink tubing
It only needs a short to fry it/set it on fire