SX 1250 FROM SCRATCH

[zebulon1]

His wood crafted bonnets are beautiful.
I have a bunch of the new corner pieces for the big Pioneer receivers he made for me. He had packed them up and as he was walking out of the Post Office, he tripped up on the curb and fell. He sent me a photo of his injuries. He thought the image was funny. He really was one of a kind. This was shortly after he recovered from his stroke. He insisted on getting them sent out.

 

[zebulon1]

I bought Rick’s amp boards and started to build the kits.
Looking forward to hearing it with the modern components.
It finally cooled down here in LAS today. Still forecasting 95 to 98 degrees. Beautiful morning at 74 as the sun rose up.
I’m using a Weller WESD51 I had as a backup but it’s on full duty in the dining room shop this summer. I really like it over the Hakko 936. I’ve had the 936 for 18 years as the main iron. The Weller keeps a steady temp making the soldering so smooth. It funny how you become so accustomed to the equipment to see these little nuisances. I like the auto shutoff feature too.

 

[rcs16]

Wow, smoking temps, 70F and raining here, good rainy day projects, lost my soldering helper this week, off she goes back to nursing school, back to soldering for me. She was billing me 2.5hrs, did one today, 1hr-45min been at it a while, better slow and steady, take your time,
12.5mm lead spacing for most of the resistors, start with them, lift power resistors, diodes, transistors, caps...
Denise stuffs them and I inspect before soldering, hate it when I find a wrong insertion after I inspect and solder, worst is finding a wrong insertion at test time, process error wrong ecaps insertions show up real quick on power supplies
and away you go.
Just bought a used wesd51 to keep as a spare, use a wes51 near daily, actually like seeing the flashing green control light, that way I know it's up to temp and ready to go.
Prefer a ETA tip, seems to be the best for keeping tinned, good enough for surface mount as well using 15mil solder.
AIM Glow core no clean 32mil, 63/37 2% flux solder, best stuff goin.
Have fun, see how you make out on the remote temp sensor assembly

 

[zebulon1]

It took 2.5 hours to complete the resistors and a few film’s on both boards. That’s as far as I got.
I’ll check out the tip suggestion.
I really love the Weller.
I like the ETA tip too. It has the flexibility to solder the tight spots by turning it sideways.
My supplies are dwindling quickly, after working full time on the audio.