Fix Dried Up Solder Paste

Pro Maker Tip: Have you ever had a tub of solder paste lying around which has dried out and doesn’t reflow properly? You don’t need to throw it away and can reactivate it easily. Pour a few ml of liquid rosin flux and mix it very thoroughly. Break the dried-out parts too and mix well. Solder paste will be back to normal for your soldering purposes. Add small amounts of flux initially to get the level of viscosity you want. (Might not be production quality solder paste but good enough for most applications)

Adding good quality high concentration isopropyl alcohol(IPA) also works, but the issue is that it will dry out again very fast.

For those of you who don’t know, solder paste is just very tiny solder balls put in a chemical mixture to help with ease of spreading as a paste. It’s used for soldering surface mount components on PCBs.

Solder Paste
Solder Paste Flux
Solder Paste with right consistency
Solder paste with the right consistency
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Heat Dissipation via Battery Charging

The image shows the heat dissipation caused by a 10W battery charging circuit without a heatsink or forced cooling. Thermal management is a must in designs. Always follow the datasheet during layouts for the best thermal performance. Here dissipation is mostly via thermal vias and a large ground plane.

Thermal cameras will help you isolate thermal issues in your high-current boards.

Pro-tip for PCB designers: Never Ever give thermal relief for thermal vias. You will reduce the thermal dissipation with those reliefs. Folks usually miss this in design due to the usual habit of creating vias with thermal reliefs.

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