In our previous issues in this series on making circuit boards, we covered placing solder paste and placing components. Now it’s time to bake our cake!
There are a variety of methods for reflowing a circuit board, but they all rely on a single principle: heat up the solder paste (a mixture of flux and solder) until the flux burns off and the solder becomes liquid, and then cool it down. Accomplishing this once or twice is easy; once you’ve played with a hot plate you’ll swear off through hole. Scaling it up and doing it repeatedly with high yield is extremely challenging, though.
Read the full article at Hackaday: Tools of the Trade – Reflow