• WIP

  • Mini K-Ceptor design

Hi @valor Your design looks very interesting and I'm in a process to order the components. I have not used surface mount components before and I'm very curios how did you solder the LSM9DS1TR ?

    8 days later

    Hi Stinde,
    I recreate the mini kceptor, as a beginner too and one is working 👍. Its a bit pain to solder the Imu. I added soldering paste on the pcb with a soldering mask. After that I placed all components on the pcb and used a hot air station on the lowest temp. Mine was at 300C. I hold it about 5cm above the Imu for short time. Dont use too much heat and time because you could damage the Imu!
    With my other hand I added a little bit pressure on the Imu. I used cheap tweezers for that.
    If you use a hot air station watch out that you dont blow the other components away.
    I recomend you to start soldering with the Imu because its a pain to add him after the other components are solderd on.

    If you want know a bit about what I did you can look at my Thread.

      18 days later

      Hello valor, for the mini-hub, there are two lines in the BOM that contain (45) 100nF and (15) 10nF. They dont seem to be tied to any designators and I don't see them in the gerbers. what are they for?

      thanks in advance for any help
      jake

        5 days later

        Stinde I've used hot air gun on some of the boards, and reflow oven on the rest.
        With a good solder paste, the IMU reflows nicely.

          Hi werbs ,
          That's right. Those capacitors were not used on the Mini-Hub, and did not have any designators. Thanks for pointing it out. I've updated the BOM and pushed to github.
          The BOM for the Mini-Hub should look like this now:

          Best regards,
          Val

            When hand reflowing the ICs, once the solder liquefies, it's a good idea to tap the IC (from top) very gently. The tap will squeeze the excess molten solder out and they will immediately solidify into solder balls which can be removed easily. This method helps to prevent the shorts underneath the IC package.

            4 months later

            Nice! I had to check for a second if my set was still is its place. Your build is identical 😀
            Have you gotten to capturing allready?

              valor Not yet. My pi’s WiFi function is not working. So I ordered a new one and have not received yet.

                  ShiroSaki Have you tried removing the heatsink-armor from your PI? It's might be affecting your signal dramatically.

                    Can you upload the 3d files for the clip?
                    (I found the reason why my pi’s wifi is not working is that I forget to select the region)

                      ShiroSaki Sure, I've just uploaded the Chordata Mini K-Ceptor v1.2 - Case clip.STL to github. Sync up your fork, or pull down if you checkout directly from my github repository 😀