Hi time for another installment in the Nixie tube design video. We've received our PCBs from Ella Crowe so we'll just take a quick look at this before we actually assemble it. I Got a 48-hour turnaround on these I think they made it I ordered them on the first and they packed them on the second. So I think they made them within 48 hours.

but I don't think they actually shipped within the 48 hours. so I'm not sure what the deal is I think it was a day out or something like that. Anyway, they they did reasonably well I guess and considering that it was like fifty bucks or something and they sent me a five, but I actually got about seven I think so. yeah, they just made a few more and this is larger than your average.

a little arduino shield or something like that. What is it like three times, two and a half times the size of that. So it's pretty damn good for the price. This, no, the board is not warped.

that's the camera on my. that's the lens on my together microscope at that particular zoom level. so it looks, trust me, it is actually square. So let's go in and take a look at it.

The first thing is that yes, I ordered red solder mask I got red solder mask I didn't order gold plate so that's why it's just solder coat and there there are no stupid manufacturer markings on the silkscreen or anything like that. They haven't added their own code I Don't think there was an option to disable that, they just haven't done it and that's great. I Hate manufacturers who actually do that. It's really freaking annoying.

Well let's have a look at the silkscreen first. To my eye, it doesn't look like it's a dot matrix printer, but of course it is all your most of your low-cost Our services like that are and you can see the individual dots and it's quite good. I Don't know about the alignment on that. It looks ok.

maybe that one doesn't slightly line up so maybe there's a slight offset on the silkscreen there. But for a prototype board, it's all fine and dandy. It's not a photo image of all solder mask which is the other art type which is usually a bit more. You know you get on your more expensive boards and it's not dot matrix printed.

You just see like fect outlines like you would on the traces. So if you have a look at the solder mask expansion here, I'm not going there with my microscope and actually measure it and all that sort of stuff. The alignment of the solder mask is pretty good. around the pad there.

you can say there's a slight offset there, but really no big deal. Caramel. What? The solder mask? Expansion wise? that's dough that's certainly more than acceptable for a prototype. No worries whatsoever.

But they haven't expanded the solder mask so you get a like a thin slither through there so they're done. No, that is fine and dandy. Let's have a look at some of the Via holes, shall we? Where that's good alignment of the hole. Based on the annular ring around there, it's almost perfect.

and it's always hard to see the plating inside holes. but there it is. It does look quite reasonable yet no worries whatsoever on that. That looks like very smooth and consistent.

but yeah, like you'd have to do a cross sectional analysis. Of course this is not a professional. PCB Usually the good manufacturers do send you a cross-sectional cut through the vias and stuff like that so you can see the plate in our consistency. But everything looks nice and clean.

There's no there's no day, there's no silkscreen DAGs on there. There's no, you know, a contamination of the board or anything like that. It looks quite good. so I'm happy with that.

That is certainly a pass on the electro board. No worries. All right. So let's start out by soldering.

What you're going to want to do here is always. So do your low-profile stuff first. So all your surface mount stuff or your surface mount chips or use surface mount regulators and capacitors and all sorts of other stuff. these through-hole ones don't put those in.

Definitely don't put the sockets for the Nixie tube. Why? Because you can lay your board flat on the bench like this and it doesn't. You know it doesn't. Rock Because you've got pins sticking out at the bottom or anything like that.

A big trap for young players. You're pretty. You learn that pretty quickly that it's just nicer to solder or the surface mount stuff first. And also, you can get in there with your iron of course, without these big components blocking access to pins and something like that.

and certainly something like this, where you've got to be, you know, axial resistor right next to a S O type package here. You would definitely want to do the S O package firstly and get in there and wipe across the pins and solder those pins on the chip. So yeah, definitely do all. S MDS First golden rule just checking that my chip matches the footprint.

Yep, very nice cuz we did actually goof that in the original layout and had to re do it. I Chose the narrow width S O package and this is the 7 1/2 millimeter wide one so that's spot-on Let's go. And we're going to be using lead-free stuff today. None that lead rubbish.

No. I am a lead fanboy I'm sold Anyway, it's important to use very fine stuff. I've got nought point three, eight millimeter stuff. You don't necessarily have to go this low, but anything under naught point five millimeters is what you got.

It's got our five Core Flux genuine moldy core brand, the choice of Champions and so we'll give it a go. So that means the five core of course means it's actually got five cause of flux in there. If you got that under the microscope, you might be able to see it. And the good thing about the fine solder is that it allows you to feed in a small amount of solder under the joint.

you don't want too much. That causes too many issues with sorting. A lot of people wonder why their solder in sucks when other people do it so well. It's because use fine sold you control the amount of solder that you put onto the joint and that's a big deal.

For surface mount stuff, you want the fine stuff 0.5 millimeter under. Trust me. Next thing we're gonna need is some flux. I've got this old electro lube flux pen.

I'm a big fan of the flux pin. We'll just put some flux on there like that. We'll put some more over the top in a sec, but you just want a layer a base layer down like that. so it's under the pin.

So the first thing we're going to want to do is just tack down the corner pin. so we just want to feed a bit of solder under that pin there and then we can place it. So there we go and we can do the pin on the other side as well. like that, so the chip is held in place so now we can do our drag soldering.

Just put a little bit more flux there and there just to coat the pins. You can never have too much flux. Okay, now what? I've got on my JB The iron here is a little well tip. You can set a little hole in the bottom and there's actually we can put some solder on that now.

Normally you don't want to put solder on to your iron because you can seal the flux burning off there right? That's normally a bad thing, but we've got additional flux on there so it's going to be okay. And these well based ones are designed for drag soldering like this because they sort of drag the solder back out like sort of suck it back out of the joint as you're putting it on so it's easier to control the amount of solder that goes onto the joint. And I haven't actually used this one before this. Tip: it's brand new and I haven't practiced with this I think it's on the small side, but I'm gonna give it a go so this could end very badly.

So we've got our solder on there and we just want to literally drag it across like that and ended badly on the first couple of pins, but we can just get that off there, clean it up a bit, and we should find maybe that second last one hasn't got much on there. We'll just add a bit more. So do you see how the solder just flowed onto there? That one's got a bit bit too much. It's a bit how you're doing, but now we'll baste.

Tip will be able to suck that back out. But ordinarily you know once you get this right then you're just literally. just. one.

drag across should do the trick just to show you that you don't need one of those well based tips. I've got my Huge, which is my general purpose iron that I use pretty much for everything. I'm a Big Chisel is one of my big recommendations for soldering, even for surface mount believe it or not. So let's try and do drag soldering like this.

Just put some solder on there I put some flux back on the pins of course. I've tacked down the two corner pins I've got some solder on the bottom. There probably should put a bit more, but let's let's give this a bell, shall we see? Drag it across like that? And Bob's your uncle? a little bit of a dag in there? Yep, you don't need a wheel base tip. by the way.

that ugly stuff you can see that's just all gunk and flux residue that all our cleanup in the wash. Geez, the alignment of that chips a bit. how you do it well. let's not worry about that.

drag along and we can this. I'm doing it a bit slower. You can do it fast of course that beautiful wait. You know, a couple of little soldered eggs in there, but you tied him up if you want.

but generally you don't have to. they're not gonna short out anything. And if you're not a fan of drag solder in, that's alright. You don't have to do drag soldering.

You've already seen me do this before. It's the I Don't know whether or not has an official name, but it's the Dab method. and I Rather like this is because it's very controlled. you don't.

You can't accidentally put any excess force on the pins really. and the solder just flows into each individual pin like that off the tip of the iron and just the right amount that you happen to need to do a nice fill it. It's not hard to do a good SMD soldering at all. So there's a result of that dab method there.

and that is beautiful. Just enough solder to form a very nice fill it on those pads there. Celestia Wanting in real time? shall we put some flux down there? Put our tin our pad there, whack out chip on. make sure you got around the right way.

You can use tweezers for this or do it by hand. Doesn't matter I Put a bit to my soldering iron and solder on there. It's a bit how you're doing, isn't it? The alignments not terrific on that, but we'll run with that and then we'll dab There we go and now we're ready up. Sorry just to make it easier because these chips, especially older ones.

they get oxide oxidization on the pins and everything so that's what the flux is really good for. It just gets right through that rubbish and all right. And then we I won't do drag I'll just go dab dab dab dab this beautiful thing of beauty joy. Forever Deliberately missed that one.

So because I knew the solder would wick down there. but there you go, we're getting there we get to. Once again, we could save a few seconds by doing that. Sure.

Ah, justic that I didn't haven't got my fume extractor because it will cause too much noise here. So below this right I'm using like what is that? a two and a half millimeter tip or whatever. No worries. Beautiful.

How long did that take? Anyone Timing? you know it's just a little tip. What? I would do here just to be more efficient when you've got a lot of chips like this is to sort of batch the process. So I've like on and fluxed all of those pins and then I've gone and dabbed some solder on to the corner pin there and then I'll go put them in place. So I'll get multiple chips, go bang bang bang bang bang and then I'll go drag sold of the whole lot and it ends up in a little bit more efficient and quicker.

And of course if you don't have a flux pin then you can always get in there and do it the old-fashioned way and use the multi-core inside your solder like that. So just apply your iron down there and apply the solder to the joint. This is where your not point three eight millimeter solder comes in real handy to try to in that with one millimeter solder and see how you get on and something like this sock two to three. I would get in there and once again soda the pin first just to put it in place.

So we put that in place and I don't have to use flux for this one. It doesn't matter because we can get in there with our individual without the whoop hello Yep, that's what you get when you look at the screen. You don't get that 3-dimensional view of what's happening there, viewing the screen instead of viewing the object. and then we go in and solder out tag.

Thank you very much. There we go. Nicely done and with surface-mount passives of course you want to just dab one pad like that and dip it in place. Yes, it is the wrong size.

I'm you. I'm put in a No 603 on a No 805 pad. but me, she'll be right. By the way, when you're trimming component leagues, don't go in there flashlight like completely flat with the board like that because you just put likely stress on the solder joint.

Haven't got much of a filler on here, but generally just go in there and then just tilt it. Just a just a weed head like that. and Bob's your uncle and it doesn't matter how good a digital microscope you have. Multi-thousand dollar - Garneau 1.

Ah, nothing beats a good stereoscopic microscope like the Mantis Here you can get in there for visual inspection. Fantastic. Can't be beat. Now as for the Nixie tubes here: I'm not going to just solder them are straight in.

That's a bad idea because these things are. You know you might want to replace them, they're fragile, etc. etc. So you know the best thing to do is use these sockets.

I Just bought these on eBay There are specifically designed for Nixie tube sockets over some Nixie tube store that sells all Nixie tube parts. Fantastic! They cost are a bugger-all and they've got two levels. Okay there's our pin you can either have like the thin pin that go like that and just stop. But I actually drilled the hole.

Let's try it. Does it fit? Ah, beautiful. look at that is hardly any wiggle in that at all. So we've got the drill size right and so you can sit it in like that or you can leave it off like that.

If you drill a smaller hole it'll just stop there. But of course then you're probably going to get a bit more wiggle on that. It's better to stick a straight in, so that's really very nice. So I'll just go around and solder all those in beauty and just a little trap for young players.

By the way, if you've got a mat that is, you know that can easily burn. you. shouldn't you know? because this one is a one of these proper rubberized ones designed for taking heat on it. Of course, the heat will transfer these pins through these pins very easily when you actually go to sold of them, so you know the other end will instantly get almost as hot as what the joint is.

So just be careful that anything under anything under the bottom doesn't burn. And of course if you don't want the wretched things to fall out, you can just solder them under the top. Do that. No worries.

check it out. Starting to look pretty schmick. Kidding it? Yep. Oh Beautiful and behold, the completed module.

Check it out. Isn't it beautiful? We've got our we Must D one module on the back, our PI lowpoo high voltage our module and yes, I have actually powered it up and it does do the business. But I've got a program the thing so yeah, I could pair it up but it doesn't display anything but it regulates and everything's hunky-dory It generates the hundred and sixty volts on the tubes. Yes I Know that might have been a bit boring, but hopefully you learned something I added a bit in there on SMD assembly and stuff like that? solder in So yeah, solder in a board together.

It's just another part of the video step-by-step for this thing. And yes, so we'll have to do a future video on powering it up, programming the module, and getting it working into its final application. So if you liked it, please give it a big thumbs up. And as always discussed down below, catch you next time you.