As devices get smaller and smaller, surface mount devices (SMD) are becoming more popular.  As an alternative to traditional, larger through hole components, SMD components save space on PCBs.  One glance at the tiny size of the components can be intimidating at first but the reflow soldering method makes it simple.  Reflow soldering is not only quick but also inexpensive, especially for batch jobs.

New to soldering? No problem, check out basic soldering tutorial and surface mount soldering guides.

Reflow Soldering Materials:

• An old toaster oven
• Putty knife
• Rubbing alcohol
• Tweezers
• Solder paste
• Kapton Film stencil to apply solder paste over PCB pads.

How to Solder Surface Mount Components:

1. The project starts with a Kapton stencil, a PCB holder and the PCB to be soldered. The PCB is placed on the holder; the stencil goes on top, fixed with scotch tape. The holder is really useful as it keeps the PCB in place for the stencil to do its job.

   

2. Solder paste is applied on the stencil with a putty knife. Using the putty knife, excess solder pastes is scraped off from the stencil template.  The larger components like 1206 resistor/capacitors may require thicker solder paste while a thinner layer is good for the smaller parts. Excess paste, if stored properly in an airtight container can be reused again.

   

3. Mounting the PCB with the components is straightforward with a pair of tweezers and a steady hand.
4. A very important component called the temperature marker is a useful addition on the board for the reflow process. The marker is a crayon which melts at the precise temperature of reflow, thus making it a visual indicator to stop the reflow heating.
   
5. The board is now ready for the toast. As the author shows, place boards on a shelf so that temperature marker is visible through the oven door, slide the shelf in and set toaster to ‘Bake’ at a point less than 400F for 5 minutes. Gradually move up to 500F and watch the temperature marker for the first signs of melt down.
   
6. The reflow process stops at the exact point the temperature marker liquefies and becomes transparent. Allow the board to cool, take it out and remove the remains of the marker with alcohol.  For a more in depth tutorial, check out Circuits@home.

What you have in your hands is a complete and precisely done solder job! Soldering is compulsory skill for most hack projects.  Heat up the irons and check out these previous posts:

• Surface Mount Circuit Board Soldering
• Helping Hands for Soldering Leds + Resistors
• DIY Awesome Soldering Stations

Here’s another fantastic tutorial from our Open Source Arduino master, Matt. See all of our Arduino projects.

In the spirit of the open source gameboy (#5 on the Top 40 Arduino Projects of the Web), Matt’s latest project uses a few Arduino shields to make the Open Source “PSP” with two-player ping-pong. Since the PSP has dual controllers mounted on either side of a screen, the Open Source PSP project also has two sets of controllers linked to a central touchscreen.

The TripleWide Extendershield from Liquidware replicates the Arduino pins in three places, so three shields can be physically connected to and controlled by a single Arduino board. Two InputShields are used in left and right hand configurations for  joystick-controllers, and the TouchShield Slide an Arduino OLED-touchscreen shield used for the display. All three are placed on top of the TripleWide, and an Arduino board (in this case the Duemilanove) is placed underneath, as shown in the chalkboard drawing below:

Assembling the hardware, in this case, is quite straightforward.  Snap the Arduino on to the center slot of the TripleWide like this:

Flip the TripleWide over, then place the InputShields (one “left-handed” and one “right-handed”) on the outer slots, and the TouchShield Slide on the central slot. The finished gadget should look like this:

For a refresher on getting started with the Arduino, the HackNMod introduction to the Arduino will probably come in handy. You can get all the parts in a kit if you’d like and the source code for two-player ping-pong on the Open Source PSP.  The source code is packaged into a single file with everything needed to program each of the modules in this project. The Antipasto Arduino IDE to run the file can be downloaded here, along with more instructions. Then you’re ready to challenge a friend to some handheld, open source, Arduino ping-pong!

This post was submitted by a Hack N Mod fan, just like yourself. If you’d like to earn money from your projects, feel free to contact us.

This is a fantastic, unique project which uses RFID tagged pictures to select and play album. The system utilizes the easy to use arduino microcontroller platform along with an RFID reader and is also ethernet enabled. See more pics and details:

When a tag (album picture) is placed over the tag, a signal is processed by the arduino and sent over ethernet to a database. This database then looks up the tag and matches it with the corresponding album and begins to play the selected music.

The author has posted a nice write up for the Arduino mp3 build on his site where he goes into further detail about the project specs. Check out our entire database of audio and arduino projects for your next build and project inspiration.

This one eyed engineer has built himself a tiny wireless camera which fits into his empty eye socket.  He calls it the Eyeborg Project.  A news interview of the inventor is above and another discussion is below.  If this isn’t weird enough, another guy embeded a rare earth magnet into his pointer finger which actually allows him to sense magnetic fields.  Even better, MIT engineers invented another fantastic sixth sense.

This gaming hobbyist has shown that there is more than one way to take a photograph. He has found a unique way to get something more out of his work as an x-ray technician.

His “camera” of choice is an X-Ray machine of course:

Using his spare hours, he has stacked up quite a collection of X-Ray photographs of gaming consoles. From Wii-motes to a PSP and even X-rays of cartridges, he has captured them all in black and white.

The hobby is uncommon and almost weird. The effects though are extraordinary. The X-Ray photographs look like detailed blueprints. Take a look at his collection of photographs on Flickr and you will surely appreciate his work.   They would definately make for some cool wallpapers too.

If taking unique snapshots is your game, then look through our collection of photography hacks.

Using spare resistors, caps, pots, chips, sockets, and other electronic parts, this man created outstanding circuitry figurines. More pictures and details can be found on his Flickr page. You can find supplies for your next DIY project in our store.

Related Image Galleries:

• Epic Collection of Sci-Fi Ray Guns
• Impressive LEGO Star Wars Scene with LEDs
• DIY Solar Sensing Robots

Taking a break from circuitry, we’re going to show you some outstanding chemistry hacks.  First, we have liquid magnets called ferrofluid (which you can buy on eBay or make your own).  Next, we have fantastic demonstrations of sulfur hexafluoride aka anti-helium. Basically, it makes your voice really deep and light objects can even float on top of it.

The Hard Drive Grinder:

Take an old hard drive, attach a sanding disc, plug it in.  Build your own DIY hard drive grinder.

Giant Mechanical Spider:

Monitor Artwork:

Retro Robotics:

Electronics Motorcycle:

Circuit Board Protection:

Old School Jalopy

Some images via DRB