SMD soldering with hot air gun

[dmta]

Hi all,

I saw a lot of you-tube videos on soldering SMDs with the use of a hot air gun and solder paste. But all of those boards had solder mask on them which aided the proper flow of solder. But is it possible to do this without the solder mask? (my first thought is that it can't be done)

The main reason I'm asking this is because I have this DRV8432 HSSOP package to be soldered.

Regards

 

[mvs sarma]

i humbly feel that while lead is melting under hot air gun, the surface tension would not allow it to go and touch another surface , unless too much lead is applied before placing the component.

 

[kubeek]

I wouldn´t worry about it. I did a bunch of packages like that and some with even finer pitch, and I didn´t use a stencil for the solder paste. The result was that the chip got nicely aligned, but with solder bridges on some pins. Just use a bit of liquid flux and solder wick afterwards and you´re golden with or without soldermask.

 

[ronsimpson]

I use the toaster oven mostly, the hot air gun some, and a small tipped iron.
The HSSOP package has a heat sink pad that may not solder well with hot air. It will work well with the toaster oven.

 

[dmta]

Thank you all for replying.

I wanted to ask this question before I ordered the part from TI free samples, so now I've ordered it.

Best regards

 

[reubenT]

I had a PLL circuit to put together recently using several surface mount IC's no PC board, just a general purpose perf board. I managed to do it by tying a short piece of heavy copper wire on the end of the soldering iron with sharpened end, and since I need reading glasses to see small things I used some extra strong ones for magnifying glass to see what I was doing nicely.