BAWC Forums

Jeff V. wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:18 pm That and powder coating the calipers.

That wasn't a factory option?

No. The only blue calipers were on the Carbon 65 and ZR1, and they were a lot darker.

Jeff V. wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 4:38 pm No. The only blue calipers were on the Carbon 65 and ZR1, and they were a lot darker.

Wow, that's a lot of customization then for 668 miles...

aaronatstate wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 4:39 pm

Jeff V. wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 4:38 pm No. The only blue calipers were on the Carbon 65 and ZR1, and they were a lot darker.

Wow, that's a lot of customization then for 668 miles...

When you never drive it you have lots of time for customization

Thats a lot of money. Nice investment Jeff.

Chris GTO TT wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:04 pm Time to stop driving yours and park it *waits for Frode to come angrily stomping in*

I didn't buy mine as an investment. I fully expect to lose my ass on it if I ever sell it.

Wow! 668...

I almost finished off the main control panel LEDs last night. Still need to order a couple more blue LEDs. I had exactly enough red ones after I ruined one of those too.

These things are tedious. Here's the size comparison I promised. That's a fine tipped sharpie for scale.

Jesus. That’s crazy.


Coop

Dang, makes micro machines look ginormous.

Yeah my hands don't work at that kind of small detail haha. Mr Clumsy over here.

*Insert "nope" gif here*

I had a friend who was working with some really small stuff and he said that you basically put it on a board and heat it and then it all solders itself together? I really didn’t follow but he was talking about small things like iPhone boards.

Coop

Kinda. When they make these things at the factory, a machine puts all the little bits in place and then the whole thing gets sent through an oven. Sort of like a commercial pizza oven, with a conveyor belt. All the solder melts at the same time, and all the parts just sort of self-align because the solder flows onto the metal bits and not the plastic or circuit board bits. It also helps that they use a solder paste that helps hold the pieces in place until it goes through the oven.



Doing it by hand is a lot harder because you can only heat one side of the LED at a time. So I have to solder one side down, push on the LED with the tweezers to get the other side down, and then reheat both sides to relieve any tension I created with all the pushing. All while making sure you don't smash or melt the plastic upper shell of the LED.

The right way to do it would be to clean all the old solder off with a copper wick. Then do one side at a time. But I've had very bad luck with copper wick and flux mess.

If I ever do this again, I'm going to see if I can get some heated tweezers or something, so I can do both sides at once.

I have a small hot air tool for this, but these things are so tiny it would just blow them right off the board.

yeah you can do this yourself really, with stencils and paste and a hotplate or hot air.

thats not the smallest thing ive ever soldered. amtech flux ftw

Next time I get one of these I'll pay you to do it

smallest ive done was 0402s, i moved everything over from one board to another for a gamecube hdmi mod

a size reference for everyone else


Actually, the site that picture comes from has a dude building his own pick n place machine
https://mcuoneclipse.com/2018/06/26/bui ... h-openpnp/

this is why i bought a full ass microscope lol

Nice. My LEDs are 0805 for comparison.