Even though I may never own a microscope quite as nice, I'm all the wiser seeing the reflow in such detail. Glad to have spotted this video from Hackaday!
@@d4t4b4s3f4c3 It can be done. The question is whether you are willing to pay for expensive servos and/or calibration kits for the optic AI. OR do you have the knowledge to write your own?
Maybe it's just me, but there's something really trippy about the way that microscope is set up and how well it is lit, it looks like we're watching 3D rendered stuff but it's actually real life
It's always nice to see someone with this much attention to detail. I have a soldering certification that is even more stringent than what NASA requires. Towards the end of the course we solder a 140 pin flat pack using a soldering iron only with a 0.5mm pitch by hand and the expected quality for certification is as you described where the solder flows up a specific ammount at the front and back of the lead, but we also look for stress cracks, pitting, deweting and the tiniest traces of flux. Basically, the solder joints all end up with a mirror finish to it.
Its Micro and Miniature Soldering its used for repair of mil spec items where a failure of a solder joint could cause 100 million dollars to go up in flames in an instant. We even learn how to excavate multilayer CCA that somehow have a hole in them and replace the copper traces by hand and epoxy back the layer one layer at a time. Even the epoxy is closely examined with a microscope for any trapped bubbles in the 10 micron scale that could compromise the insulation performance of the epoxy.
It always amazes me how robust the reflow/SMT process is. With the advent of cheap PCBs in a few days, the world of SMD components is at your fingertips!
The quality of this video is just out of the charts. You have no idea how educational and soothing it gets. Thanks for the professional demo with this amazing 3D microscope! Really eye opening!
Thanks! Brings back memories. I worked in the board shop at Compaq Computer Corp for a couple years back in the 90s. I used to repair boards and replace connectors and chips by hand--even the ones with hundreds of legs!
I have just begun my journey into the realm of electronics and soldering, so your video helps me IMMENSELY to understand why my solders look the way they do. Thank You!
At 06:05 you should place the iron and the solder at the same spot on the pin simultaneously, the solder will help carry heat into the pin. You should also remove the iron and the solder at the same time, or the iron very shortly after the solder. If you leave the iron on too long you boil off the flux and the solder wants to "follow" the iron off of the part (makes little solder-sicles). When you see the pin push free to the left it indicates that you held the iron on the joint too long and melted the plastic holding the pin on the other side.
Hi Robert, this is so unbelievable, in my 30 years of soldering I never imagined it to be so beautiful! 💓. Thank you! I hope to check out some more of your videos when I get the time.
6:10 This is something that many of us know, but few teach. Touching the solder to the iron as a catalyst to get it flowing. Once you have a little liquid solder, all is well. You can really overheat the pad/component trying to get the solder to melt without touching the iron.
This is really nice to watch. Thank you. I have just one remark here, if the solder joint becomes dull when it cools down, chances are it was overheated. Properly soldered contacts usually stay shiny.
There's always been something satisfying to me to solder and get beautiful solder joints like these. In my job, I routinely soldered 100+ pin flat packs by hand and I always took pictures of the best ones "for the album", as Wallace always said to Gromit.
Its a far cry from the soldering of the mid 90s when I was doing board level repair. It was like using a 2x4 as the soldering gun and a garden hose for solder. Climbing up the pins is a great way to use up the extra solder and and avoid it connecting to the next pin. Excellent information!!! Sub, like and obviously a comment.
Hand soldering: it looks like you shouldn't keep that much heat, so the pins are starting to wobble in melting plastic holder. I often rise up iron's temperature to make it solder faster, so plastic have no time to melt. Also proper surface tensioning flux helps to fill all gaps with solder fast. Thank you for making and sharing these great shots! Really helps to better grasp on what's happening over the pads
During my bachelors degree I worked part time at a faculty at my university. I had access to a soldering laboratory and soldered some things for the PhD candidate I was working for. I had access to a similar microscope. I just spent hour after hour on that thing. The first time I saw what soldering paste actually looked like I was completely amazed
That's amazing photography. I was hoping for a QFN but I guess even this would not see very much. I flow QFNs on a kitchen hot plate at home. Thanks for the cool video.
Reminds me of my old job, did repair all kinds of mainboards (PC's), like Asus, Abit, MSI, Aopen, Gigibyte. Did replace all kind of chips and other components like CPU, PCI, AGP, USB you name it sockets. Had a great time back then ;) Anyway great video.
Yep, I used to repair circuit boards that used surface mount technology, including chips with over 100 leads. It would take me about 10 minutes to replace one of those. One thing I had in my tool kit was a dental pick, which my dentist gave me. It's great for removing whiskers of solder. BTW, if you're using acronyms, you should say what they are the first time you use them. For example, while some may know that BGA means Ball Grid Array, many don't.
I do casetype 0201 up to all kinds of THT parts and EMI shields manually at work. The smaller parts under a stereo microscope. Even after all those years and practice there is always a certain challenge with how the PCB's are designed (thermal relief, numbers of GND layers, etc.) to get a reasonable good solder result. The Microscope has become my favorite and necessary tool to work with SMT and quality control in general. This Microscope system however, is very advanced. Love the possibility to change the viewing angle. I am a bit jealous right now, gotta say. ;-)
If you can. Some components, like mems chips, quarz oscillators and ceramic capacitors don't do well in ultrasonic baths. A clean PCB with dead components is not helping anyone...
Hey Robert, have you done a video on the microscope you are using in this video, i looked through your channel and did not see it. I would love to see the details in what you can do with it, how it works, where you get one and how much it costs. Larry
When hand soldering, always touch the solder onto the so,dering iron tip first, the solder will melt and release its core flux which wets the solder onto the items being joined (ie; pin and pad). So touch the solder onto the iron's tip, right next to the pin, in the half second it takes the solder to melt the molten solder should instantly wet onto the pin and pad, then feed in the remainder of the solder to get the final flow. Also, a double-touch of the solder can really help to flow it around the pad because the movement of the solder rod agitates the melt pool. 👍
Its interesting to me, I have been in IT since 1989 and I used to work with computers so much it was impossible to get good fingerprints off me because I had little pinholes in all my fingertips by pulling out boards that had old discrete compenent. Surface Mount Technology has been around since the mid 90s but I remember being told back then it was something that could not be repaired on the bench. I guess strategies have evolved.
Yes, they are prefabricated balls of solder. You can even buy them, just like soldering paste, in different sizes for "reballing" a chip if you need to rework a bad solder job.
You should follow the thermal graph for paste and measuring thermal characteristics of pcb . For solder paste openings holes IPC footprint standard is right way to do it . Otherwise you can get cold soldering on some pins.
Fascinating! I wish you could do some experiments to try to reverse the shiny/cloudy result (especially by just changing soldering temperature and timing, maybe with heat-sinking near the solder joint to slow the cooling down): Can any techniques make a leaded joint cloudy or an unleaded joint shiny? Nobody seems to understand what's going on here, and everyone wants a shiny leaded joint!
The cloudy result can not be reversed and is something you don't want to be after as well: it's just how that particular alloy of solder solidifies. The IPC rework/inspection section even has a significant section with pictures showing how different solder connections (stranded wire to board, sturdy wire to board, component lead to board, SMT-connection, BGA-connection) look when solidified, to avoid labeling a board as suffering from bad solder connections. So, everybody who has followed an IPC-training in soldering knows what is going on...
@@weeardguy Yeah, I know shiny is usually desired, but I think that what causes a joint to go cloudy and the proof that shiny is electrically better (or is it 10-year reliability that is better?) are both not given anywhere...so I still would like to see more shiny/cloudy experiments.
@@bobuhi No, shiny is desired among hobbyists that still use leaded solder, while the industry has long moved on to lead-free solder alloys that just look different when solid and that process can not be altered in such a way that it solidifies shiny. It's just the different metals in the alloy that make for the dull appearance. There's no difference between the two in reliability by now and leaded or unleaded hardly makes a difference in my field of work (avionics) where both suffer from the same problems (bad solder joints due to temperature cycles or just aging). Leadfree joints with problems are usually a bit harder to spot as the whole connection just looks 'off' compared to leaded solder.
good information and incredible camera/microscope here! the soldering technique could use a bit of work though, at least as i have learned it. i guess you need a point tip at these sizes, but when/if not, i always prefer a chisel tip to improve heat transmission. and of course always put the solder to the tip directly, or even better when applicable, put a small bit of solder on the tip before soldering a connection to improve heat transfer even more. even better if you put flux on all your connections at first. happy soldering! :D
Even though I may never own a microscope quite as nice, I'm all the wiser seeing the reflow in such detail. Glad to have spotted this video from Hackaday!
You are everywhere, sir.
With a modern phone with a 50mp camera theres gotta be a way to use the macro function to get a poor mans version of this
@@d4t4b4s3f4c3 It can be done. The question is whether you are willing to pay for expensive servos and/or calibration kits for the optic AI. OR do you have the knowledge to write your own?
@@ragesmirk Heh, I just have way too many hobbies and spend way too much time in my RSS feeds :D
It's actually reasonably priced, I was quite surprised.
Maybe it's just me, but there's something really trippy about the way that microscope is set up and how well it is lit, it looks like we're watching 3D rendered stuff but it's actually real life
This video is way cooler than I expected.
Does it imply low-melting solder? ;)
It's always nice to see someone with this much attention to detail.
I have a soldering certification that is even more stringent than what NASA requires. Towards the end of the course we solder a 140 pin flat pack using a soldering iron only with a 0.5mm pitch by hand and the expected quality for certification is as you described where the solder flows up a specific ammount at the front and back of the lead, but we also look for stress cracks, pitting, deweting and the tiniest traces of flux. Basically, the solder joints all end up with a mirror finish to it.
What in the... What's the certificate called?
What would this level of professional soldering be used for?
@@bryceshaw06Just guessing, but prototyping and fixing some one off mil.spec or medical device.
Its Micro and Miniature Soldering its used for repair of mil spec items where a failure of a solder joint could cause 100 million dollars to go up in flames in an instant. We even learn how to excavate multilayer CCA that somehow have a hole in them and replace the copper traces by hand and epoxy back the layer one layer at a time. Even the epoxy is closely examined with a microscope for any trapped bubbles in the 10 micron scale that could compromise the insulation performance of the epoxy.
@@Guardian_Arias This is the soldering quality I strive for in my work, where would you recommend for training?
It always amazes me how robust the reflow/SMT process is. With the advent of cheap PCBs in a few days, the world of SMD components is at your fingertips!
This camera/scope is incredible! Cool video.
Just wonder, how much kidneys I should sell to buy this microscope?
Just one (depending on current kidney prices) if you're ok with a second-hand one -- around $3000. New, both kidneys if you're lucky -- about $30,000.
@@KNfLrPn Nah, this is significantly more. Probably closer to 100k than 30k.
For reference, I've got my Keyence VHX-6000(1 or 2 generations older than the one from the Video) for around 15k USD
The number of kidneys sold should not be a problem if you are not selling your own...
@@666aron thanks for idea. Hope, my neighbors won't mind it.
The quality of this video is just out of the charts. You have no idea how educational and soothing it gets.
Thanks for the professional demo with this amazing 3D microscope! Really eye opening!
Thanks! Brings back memories. I worked in the board shop at Compaq Computer Corp for a couple years back in the 90s. I used to repair boards and replace connectors and chips by hand--even the ones with hundreds of legs!
Me too on Point of Sales terminals.
your example for too much solder on the tht lead is sometimes exactly what is required on high voltage stuff where you have avoid sharp edges
The one time in soldering where the bigger the blob really is the better the job.
great info, i did not know about this..
I never would have thought of that. I know what sharp edges do with high voltage, but again I wouldn't have connected the two here.
the question is what voltage and what size of size/leads/pitch, no?
Is soldering ever allowed in high voltage applications?
I have just begun my journey into the realm of electronics and soldering, so your video helps me IMMENSELY to understand why my solders look the way they do. Thank You!
At 06:05 you should place the iron and the solder at the same spot on the pin simultaneously, the solder will help carry heat into the pin. You should also remove the iron and the solder at the same time, or the iron very shortly after the solder. If you leave the iron on too long you boil off the flux and the solder wants to "follow" the iron off of the part (makes little solder-sicles).
When you see the pin push free to the left it indicates that you held the iron on the joint too long and melted the plastic holding the pin on the other side.
totally agree and also learned something new from you! thank you! :)
Hi Robert, this is so unbelievable, in my 30 years of soldering I never imagined it to be so beautiful! 💓. Thank you!
I hope to check out some more of your videos when I get the time.
What a good reference-able video on the quality of solder joints.
Finally some high quality footage of reflow in action. You have no idea how many manufacturers are going to use this footage for training.
That camera machine and software would be hella fun to use, look so fascinating.
When you rotate the view like that, board looks like a pretty damn good 3D model.
so it looks less good than reality should look? If it was a 3d model that detailed wouldn't it be an exact 1:1 replica?
6:10 This is something that many of us know, but few teach. Touching the solder to the iron as a catalyst to get it flowing. Once you have a little liquid solder, all is well. You can really overheat the pad/component trying to get the solder to melt without touching the iron.
Robert this is very handy for both designers and quality departments in companies that need to inspect CCAs. Thank you!
This is really nice to watch. Thank you. I have just one remark here, if the solder joint becomes dull when it cools down, chances are it was overheated. Properly soldered contacts usually stay shiny.
I never saw soldering such close but now I seen it. Thanks to you.
solder baking is one of the most satisfying things i've seen
There's always been something satisfying to me to solder and get beautiful solder joints like these. In my job, I routinely soldered 100+ pin flat packs by hand and I always took pictures of the best ones "for the album", as Wallace always said to Gromit.
I would love to see how the factory puts the balls on a BGA.
A mask/stencil. paste is wiped across like a screen printed tshirt
Its a far cry from the soldering of the mid 90s when I was doing board level repair. It was like using a 2x4 as the soldering gun and a garden hose for solder. Climbing up the pins is a great way to use up the extra solder and and avoid it connecting to the next pin. Excellent information!!! Sub, like and obviously a comment.
Cool video of those close ups. Solder melting is always fun to watch :)
Hand soldering: it looks like you shouldn't keep that much heat, so the pins are starting to wobble in melting plastic holder.
I often rise up iron's temperature to make it solder faster, so plastic have no time to melt.
Also proper surface tensioning flux helps to fill all gaps with solder fast.
Thank you for making and sharing these great shots! Really helps to better grasp on what's happening over the pads
You know you have enough solder when it looks like those Hershey's kisses chocolates.
Amazing craftmanship, and the microscope is as well. Very interesting to watch!
Thank you.... awesome sight. Never expected to see this well ...live !!!
Beautiful photography! These scopes are amazing and your soldering examples are great.
During my bachelors degree I worked part time at a faculty at my university. I had access to a soldering laboratory and soldered some things for the PhD candidate I was working for. I had access to a similar microscope. I just spent hour after hour on that thing. The first time I saw what soldering paste actually looked like I was completely amazed
Which university?
@@supremeleader5516 not gonna dox myself, but it it's a big university in western Germany
@@CSTEnjoyer KIT
Phucking awesome!! It's very interesting watching all these things under the eye of microscop.
Very cool! Thanks for sharing, Mr. Robert.
That's amazing photography. I was hoping for a QFN but I guess even this would not see very much. I flow QFNs on a kitchen hot plate at home. Thanks for the cool video.
What a super pretty video, thank you for this Mr. Feranec, I toughly enjoyed this video
This microscope is amazing
been soldering for years and I can't say I have ever seen it this close :)
Mr Feranec, this is a great video!! Thank you
Reminds me of my old job, did repair all kinds of mainboards (PC's), like Asus, Abit, MSI, Aopen, Gigibyte. Did replace all kind of chips and other components like CPU, PCI, AGP, USB you name it sockets. Had a great time back then ;) Anyway great video.
Satisfaction level ↗💗
Beautiful video! Thank you very much for sharing. Gotta go check those soldering plates videos now.
Yep, I used to repair circuit boards that used surface mount technology, including chips with over 100 leads. It would take me about 10 minutes to replace one of those. One thing I had in my tool kit was a dental pick, which my dentist gave me. It's great for removing whiskers of solder.
BTW, if you're using acronyms, you should say what they are the first time you use them. For example, while some may know that BGA means Ball Grid Array, many don't.
Incredible!
Great demonstration of capillary action that causes the solder to creep up the leads.
i think its not even (just) capillary action, but also "normal" adhesion, no? the liquid solder sticks to the metal, but not the pcb?
that microscope is too cool and high definition to cost "just" a few thousands, the value of these images is insane
THAT. WAS. AWESOME!
I do casetype 0201 up to all kinds of THT parts and EMI shields manually at work. The smaller parts under a stereo microscope. Even after all those years and practice there is always a certain challenge with how the PCB's are designed (thermal relief, numbers of GND layers, etc.) to get a reasonable good solder result. The Microscope has become my favorite and necessary tool to work with SMT and quality control in general. This Microscope system however, is very advanced. Love the possibility to change the viewing angle. I am a bit jealous right now, gotta say. ;-)
Looks amazing! Subbed ❤
Nice! I've done work under magnifiers before ... but never saw it this closely.
2:43 I took that personally...
Excellent!
Ok best close up video on TH-cam prove me wrong
Shows again why you should use an ultra sonic cleaner for your pcb.
If you can. Some components, like mems chips, quarz oscillators and ceramic capacitors don't do well in ultrasonic baths. A clean PCB with dead components is not helping anyone...
Hey Robert, have you done a video on the microscope you are using in this video, i looked through your channel and did not see it. I would love to see the details in what you can do with it, how it works, where you get one and how much it costs. Larry
Thank you for this video Mr Feranec. Very informative.
When hand soldering, always touch the solder onto the so,dering iron tip first, the solder will melt and release its core flux which wets the solder onto the items being joined (ie; pin and pad).
So touch the solder onto the iron's tip, right next to the pin, in the half second it takes the solder to melt the molten solder should instantly wet onto the pin and pad, then feed in the remainder of the solder to get the final flow.
Also, a double-touch of the solder can really help to flow it around the pad because the movement of the solder rod agitates the melt pool. 👍
8:47 That multi-layer PCB profile view was super cool and super too short!
Cool things to be discovered!
Wow
What a great visualisations!
Incredible microscope
Very interesting.. this video must be shown in universities
So cool to watch!
Very cool video.
Brilliant video and he says soldering correctly.
amazing work, thank you
this is an awesome video. Thank you for posting! Subscribed!
Breaking Taps has a lot of pcb microscope stuff, also some atomic force shots of inside the chips. And electron scopes too. He made a couple DIY
Amazing, this is better than examples of IPC610
This was satisfaction for my adhd-brain 👌
That was so cool!
thank you for this video
This was awesome man! New subscriber ✌🏻
I'm always amazed at those people who downvote videos like this. Does that mean the video score less than 50/100 for them? 😮😮
Awesome video !
nice camera setup
*Every single Rossman subscriber:* "Yes. yes, we have. Why?"
That's a great job. Thank you!
very cool and informative
Its interesting to me, I have been in IT since 1989 and I used to work with computers so much it was impossible to get good fingerprints off me because I had little pinholes in all my fingertips by pulling out boards that had old discrete compenent. Surface Mount Technology has been around since the mid 90s but I remember being told back then it was something that could not be repaired on the bench. I guess strategies have evolved.
Nice tech! Also the software is awesome.
How are the BGAs produced? Same sized balls production and then placed? Maybe you can make a video on that one day!
Yes, they are prefabricated balls of solder. You can even buy them, just like soldering paste, in different sizes for "reballing" a chip if you need to rework a bad solder job.
You should follow the thermal graph for paste and measuring thermal characteristics of pcb . For solder paste openings holes IPC footprint standard is right way to do it . Otherwise you can get cold soldering on some pins.
one of the best video, thank you very much
that's mind blowing and cool
Thanks for sharing. You missed flip chip!
Yes, every day!
Damn cool video mate!
beginning of the video - omg, I want this microscope.
halfway through - yeah, I can't afford it :)
amazing
great video!
Fascinating! I wish you could do some experiments to try to reverse the shiny/cloudy result (especially by just changing soldering temperature and timing, maybe with heat-sinking near the solder joint to slow the cooling down): Can any techniques make a leaded joint cloudy or an unleaded joint shiny? Nobody seems to understand what's going on here, and everyone wants a shiny leaded joint!
The cloudy result can not be reversed and is something you don't want to be after as well: it's just how that particular alloy of solder solidifies. The IPC rework/inspection section even has a significant section with pictures showing how different solder connections (stranded wire to board, sturdy wire to board, component lead to board, SMT-connection, BGA-connection) look when solidified, to avoid labeling a board as suffering from bad solder connections.
So, everybody who has followed an IPC-training in soldering knows what is going on...
@@weeardguy Yeah, I know shiny is usually desired, but I think that what causes a joint to go cloudy and the proof that shiny is electrically better (or is it 10-year reliability that is better?) are both not given anywhere...so I still would like to see more shiny/cloudy experiments.
@@bobuhi No, shiny is desired among hobbyists that still use leaded solder, while the industry has long moved on to lead-free solder alloys that just look different when solid and that process can not be altered in such a way that it solidifies shiny. It's just the different metals in the alloy that make for the dull appearance. There's no difference between the two in reliability by now and leaded or unleaded hardly makes a difference in my field of work (avionics) where both suffer from the same problems (bad solder joints due to temperature cycles or just aging). Leadfree joints with problems are usually a bit harder to spot as the whole connection just looks 'off' compared to leaded solder.
amazing setup bro
this is so cool!
good information and incredible camera/microscope here! the soldering technique could use a bit of work though, at least as i have learned it. i guess you need a point tip at these sizes, but when/if not, i always prefer a chisel tip to improve heat transmission. and of course always put the solder to the tip directly, or even better when applicable, put a small bit of solder on the tip before soldering a connection to improve heat transfer even more. even better if you put flux on all your connections at first.
happy soldering! :D
SMD and BGA could fix partial misalignment diring soldering. When all pads are melted they could move component to correct (or incorrect) position.
Excellent
Very Cool!!
This video should be marked NSFW, the quality of those closeups is excellent.
Interesting stuff...