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PSU board and vaseline


technobreath

PSU board together with the good stuff.<br /><br />When I had etched the board I cut the tip of a q-tip diagonally, so it was sharp and pointy. Then I use it to apply the vaseline to all the pads. A rather blacksmith kinda way to do things, but certainly worked well as you can see. It took great care with the q-tip to not spill vaseline all over the place.<br /><br />When the pads were masked with vaseline, I carefully sprayed the soldermask on. Let it dry, then let it dry even more under my wife's hairdryer - then I carefully tried to remove the vaseline to see if I could remove it without harming the soldermask (I wasn't quite sure it was all set yet). But it was, and I just used the q-tips to remove the vaseline, and then washed it with soap and water to remove the rest of that good stuff.<br /><br />The results you see here. A little unprecise with the masking of the pads (too much spill) but I am really pleasd with the results.<br /><br />The soldermask is one of those "solderthrough" spray-on soldermasks, but smash told me it was much work cleaning the iron during soldering through the mask, so... that is why I did it like this. No tip cleaning / tip-ruining :).<br /><br />Now it only lacks holes. Smallest drillbit I god is 1mm. Too big for the smaller components, and it can be difficult to fill all the smaller pads, and not just half the hole, because it is too big, but with a bit of practice and care it goes just fine. 1mm is about the smallest drillbit the chuck on my drill will accept too, so I gotta make it work ;).

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yo nebs, thanks :)

The brand name of the solder mask is Bungard GreenCoat. Here's a linky to the datasheet: http://www.krepro.no/index.php?dispatch=attachments.getfile&attachment_id=271

Was a bit spendy, and u wash it off with alcohol or acetone, so cleaning with that afterwards is a no no. But for small boards it works well. However, I really recommend u mask up the pads somehow - for example with petroleum based vaseline like I did. Then u can just wash it off with soap and water afterwards. Soldering iron and nose / brain doesn't like to solder through this even though it's very possible.

Imho this solder mask is more a cosmetic mask than a real solder mask, and I'll probably not buy another can when it is empty. By that time I'm probably ordering the prototypes. But for a great look at a simple homemade board, it is super, as long as u know of it's limitations :).

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