After digesting the lessons learned from the first
board, I got up my gumption to try another board. The second board
turned out much better although I still had to work the 0.25mm pitch socket
manually to get it acceptable.
I reordered the placement of components by geographic
region rather than by type (capacitor, resistor, diode) as I had for the first
board. This resulted in no repeats of knocking already placed components
off their pads.
I learned to drop the component on or near the solder
pads and then NOT try to move it with the tweezers. Instead I drop the
tip of a pick on the board and slide the pick into the component and thereby
move it on its pads. Ends up that works much better for me rather than
trying to lay the component right on the pad (which with no parallax doesn't
work well).
After I did the solder past run, I removed the solder on
the .25mm pitch 30 pin socket as it has "slumped" and covered several adjacent
pins. Flux may have seen it draw onto the pins, but I think there was
just too much and it would bridge again. So I removed the paste in that
area before popping it in the oven.
I then manually soldered on the .25mm pitch socket -
again got some pin bridging. I tried with a solder sucker and still
bridging remained. I was wishing I had some solder wick when I happened
to think - Hey! I'll bet if I strip the insulation off of some fine stranded
copper wire - I might could make a solder wick. Well after that was the
answer. It took the solder bridges right off.
I did, however, find that SMD pad dimensions for my
diodes was off considerably. The diodes just barely caught the solder on
each end. So redid the board diagram with the correct dimensions this
time - I laid a diode on a paper print out and it fit.
Now everything looks good, but have not finished with
connectors and cutting the board into two pieces.
Even though I am starting to get "use" to the 0805 size
components, I am still going to back up to the next larger size - since I have
the board space - just to make it easier on my nerves {:>).