so we encountered a really strange thing in the lab yesterday
we've brought up a few times to our coworkers that the lab's fluorescent lighting is going to be a problem when we get to doing tests on bare dice
well yesterday we were only working with packaged parts, and it was a problem anyway!
to explain why, let me go into a little detail on electronics:
-F
@Felthry I'm imagining a photography style darkroom, only with solder baths instead of the chemicals they use to develop photonegatives
Solder baths… that's a *terrible* idea isn't it?
@octopus actually that's how some automated soldering works! wave soldering works by lowering the board to just above a solder bath that has a wave maker in it, then applying a single wave that goes across the bottom of the board and just touches it
-F
also terminating litz wire relies on using a solder bath, you have to dip the end of it in solder to fuse together the strands and burn away the inter-strand insulation
and a little pot of solder to dip your soldering iron in is really useful for tinning it, easier than using solder wire
-F
@Felthry oh wow, neat!
I'm surprised you can generate a wave to that level of precision — but I guess it not like the solder is bubbling and hissing, you're just keeping it liquid. I've never actually worked with solder, but I assume it has reasonably high surface tension?
@octopus pretty high, yeah. really low viscosity though, much lower than you'd think!
-F
@octopus also i kinda misrepresented the order of things in wave soldering--it's more just the board is passed over a stationary wave. it's a similar process to how they put frosting on donuts, just with the frosting coming up from the bottom rather than falling down from the top, and also being a tin alloy at some 300°C instead of a sugar alloy at like 50°C, and the donut is a fiberglass board with a copper glaze and plastic and silicon sprinkles and really not very much like a donut at all
-F
