Week Two - Something New

Soldiering on through Soldering

I will bring back the simple diagram of the horn to talk about an omission. When the radio waves set up in the resonant chamber of the can, the signal will be picked up by the 5.5 cm copper antenna. That very low intensity wave then goes to the computer. At the back end of the can is a LOW NOISE AMPLIFIER (LNA)

Horn Diagram wLNA

This is a specifically designed circuit (designed by Special K) for the purpose of this horn scope, so we couldn't rely on Walmart or Amazon to have them ready for us...We had to make them solder by solder.

On Thursday, they took two of us to the slaughter house...I mean solder house (there was a point where we felt we would never return alive, so the mistake is honest) to put the 40 or so inductors, capacitors, resistors, relays onto the pre-printed circuit board.

Now, I have soldered copper pipes for plumbing (big stuff...I can see), but I never have soldered micro components to a circuit board. So, Something New. For us newbies, this was to be a full day event. Alexis and I went on Thursday, Dan and New John on Friday. Old John and Howard did it last year and will go do another one on Monday when we are back in class.

Without going into much detail, this had a significant element of frustration involved with it. Trying to pick up a one millimeter long resistor with tweezers in one hand while heating a 1/4 millimeter dab of solder onto the appropriate square on the circuit board with the other. Then, place the resistor in the molten dab of solder so it cools and hardens in place, and repeating this about 80 times...YIKES! It is definitely a skill to be developed over time. I found the limit to my ability to see small and close, and I have to thank Alexis and her younger eyes for much assistance. Enjoy the micro show below...

Soldering 101...All in. That inductor is one of the big components!

Thank you Macro Lens

Holy Crap, that's small

Who wrote those numbers on there

All done...I hope they work