Designing new E Series Board - Can I hand solder the 1st few prototypes?

Hardware
1

All,

I am designing an enhanced monitoring and control board. I hope to make a fair number of these so, am going to take a stab at using the E Series module. I know there are some Ground pads under the module and it will need to be reflowed but, can I hand solder the exposed outer pins to do some initial testing? Want to work out the bugs before getting these made as there are a significant number of SMD parts on both sides so I can’t use my cheapo oven.

Thanks,

Chip

2

Let me ping someone that might be able to help, @rickkas7 or @ParticleD are you able to assist?

3

Thank you Kyle. Will reflow for production this is just to test the board.

4

I can’t find the reference where I saw this right now, but if you don’t need access to the ublox module’s USB interface, you should be able to get by without trying to solder those three ground pads underneath the E Series module.There are still ten GND pins on the castellated edges, which should be totally sufficient for prototyping.

cheers,
ParticleD

1 Like
5

Years ago before the had the equipment to do parts like this and BGA’s I would do this trick to the prototype PCB for underneath pads like this.
Place a via, slightly smaller than the pad in the pad. This way from the bottom you will be able to feed solder through the via, and it will then solder the pad.

3 Likes
6

That’s a great idea @seulater!!

cheers,
ParticleD