I want to share my experience with cooking my first Aether and the things I had troubles, sorry if it is a repost. Didn’t finish yet so I don’t know if works.
1 - Diode Orientation, I had doubts how the orientation of the diode is, it was a little confusing from the video, I asked RJ and he confirmed that the line has to go to the right and not towards the side that isn’t perfectly square off on the silk mask, see picture.
2 – When you use the needle for the solder paste for first time, just discard about 5mm (1/5 of a inch) of paste, since is too thick and doesn’t stick to the PCB very well, after discarding about 5mm the paste is just perfect. (It happened with the two needles)
3 – U2 orientation, I have a very good sight and there is no dot or mark on the IC U2 at all, I spend like 5 minutes trying to find a mark, I could not find the mark to recognize the pin 1, I looked on Internet for the data sheet for this chip and I found it, there is no mark on the top of the chip, but instead one side of the chip has an angle of 45 degrees, the side with the angle marks the pin one. See pictures.
4 – I put too much solder paste on a couple pins on the PIC (just a little more than every other place by mistake), when I cooked the board 2 pins got in shortcut, I did not try to fix it, since every solder joint is hot and melted and I was totally sure trying to fix it will move the chip and then every pin will go in shortcut and ruin all the joints, so I left it like that. Later with the solder iron tried to fixed and I could not make the 2 pins isolate each other, so I took the metal tweezers and put it between the pins, heat the pins and drag the tweezers to the side, it was just perfect, I made the pins isolate each other with minimal effort, looks like we have to be carefull how much paste we put for the chips.
5 – When I cooked the board for first time the board started to smoke for a while, I thought something was wrong but nothing happen, looks like the silk mask was smoking a little and may be this is normal.
Cas.
P.S.: Sorry for the confusion, omit point 1, the diodes lines go LEFT and not right as RJ mention below.
After the experience I had with the first Aether, it took me half of the time to do the 2nd and 3rd and they worked as soon as I finished.
Now I love SMD, I was so afraid on the first I did and the reality is if you put the right amount of paste is a piece of cake, now I’m convinced build SMD is even faster than the standard way.
I have the three of them programmed (used the Lynx Express Configuration utility to program the channel), one of them is already in the case and wireless, I’ll be posting pics when I finish with the case for the other 2.
I found out that there is way more problem soldering the bottom layer than the top with SMD, in the bottom layer there is no solder mask and there is too little space between the tracks and the ground and unless you are not careful bridges and shortcuts are easily made.
As suggestion for the next revision if possible, the tracks on the bottom layer should have more space against the ground.
Also to avoid electroshock for all contacts for the transformer (hot with 120V) I just cover them using a glue gun, I let the glue gun become real hot then just put a big drop of glue on the top of each contact, it creates a transparent cover which looks nice and give extra protection if I have to work with the Aether connected.
Cas.