Warm Tube Clock
Assembly Instructions for the „IN-16 Nixie shield“
Document Version: 2011-01-05
www.elektronika.ba
-4-
8. Place the PCB onto the “hot-plate” and turn it ON to
pre-heat. Don’t turn the “hop-plate” to maximum
temperature just yet. First put it to half, wait a minute,
and then turn it up to the maximum. The maximum
temperature for a clothing iron is around 210 degrees
Celsius which is just enough to get the job done.
9. Now, what you can (should be able to) see in this
picture is that the soldering paste we previously applied is
slightly starting to melt and liquefy. It might also start to
smoke a bit (depends on the type of your liquid solder) –
so don’t worry that is normal.
The end of the soldering process is when the solder paste
fully melts, just like in the following picture.
10. Now it is time to remove the PCB from the “hot-plate”.
I usually don’t leave it there until it cools down totally, so
after turning the “hot-plate” off I wait about half a minute
and remove the PCB with hands, but very slowly, and
place it on the desk to cool down.
Now it is time to inspect the solder-work. If the pins don’t
look like they have enough solder on them, feel free to fix
the work with your soldering iron. If there are short-
circuits between pins – fix with soldering iron!
The “hot-plate” kind of soldering is required because the
TLC59401 has a bottom GND pad that
needs
to be
soldered and this is the only way to do it (actually you
could also do this with the hot-air soldering station).
