So I'm loving what the V1 does well (Solder Paste is killer), but having a bunch of little issues that add up to there always being one single point of failure somewhere.
As I've mentionend before, I'm doing a quick and dirt Pi Hat. Not much besides a ZIF socket, three LED's, two tactile (through-hole) buttons, and assorted 0805 pullup and current-limiting resistors. That and a big honkin' female header connector. More through-holes than pads, lots of vias for an otherwise pedestrian circuit.
So I'm trying to build the fourth one in hopes I'll finally have something viable. Things I've run into that turned into board-killers:
- First two boards suffered a combination of hole alignment issues and a trace gap or two that I didn't catch until after the bake.
- Using ink for vias is very time-consuming and problematic. There always seems to be at least one that doesn't work, at which point the rework options are limited.
- Through-hole soldering is way trickier than I would have imagined (yes I've read and followed all the tips to the best of my ability). When doing reflow, things work well. A soldering iron, not so much. My learning curve has cooked a number of pads, a problem that is difficult to resolve without starting over.
So I'm persisting, as this board is a good mix of simple yet challenging. The combination of the mill for holes and final board outline, and the V1 for traces, paste, and reflow seems promising for certain categories of project. I just don't have the rhythm down yet.
On top of that are the little things:
- Burnishing is tedious and eats through burnishing pads like crazy.
- I still have the problem where SMD pads aren't perfectly flat, which makes adhesion more frail, even with reflow.
- Getting the sweet spot on ink flow is a bit of an art.
- Tips are crazy fragile.
And did I mention vias? For attempt #4 I'm going back to eyelets, with manually-dispensed paste for the flange side when reflowing the board, then using paste and an air gun for the bottom.
Don't get me wrong, the potential is there. I know that my workflow learning-curve is a big part of it, (my time-pressured stress level also isn't helping ).
For the record, the Voltera team has been wonderfully responsive, I can't wait to see what you guys come up with as the community pushes this machine to the limit.