Here’s the Money Shot!………….
And some of the journey so far……….
A Quick Trial Fit showed the PCB to be slightly misaligned
The QWERTY bit will need shifting left 1mm and down 1/2mm to make sure it’s centred. The F Keys down about 1mm. it fits perfectly however and this really only needs to be a cosmetic change as there’s plenty of space for the keys to travel and realistically won’t really be noticed when the the board is assembled and complete.
Armed with an ‘expired 2 years ago’ syringe of solder paste and a hot air gun – I spent two nights soldering the tiny SOD123 Diodes onto the board
Next were the buttons – 6 Holes each, 66 or 67 buttons…That’s, quite a few soldering joints. Thought i’d try to be clever and place all the buttons in first, flip the board upside down and just solder away………
That didn’t work – the switches went all wonky…..It’s likley this would work IF i made some form of alignment jig, but that’s an excercise for the future………
So, I spent a couple of nights soldering a couple in – with just a single pin, then flipping the board, aligning the switch to the silkscreen
The result can be seen below –
The Top row is aligned perfectly.
The last row is ‘wonky’ as each switch only has a single spot of solder holding it in. I flip it back over, re-melt that blob and re-align then finish off the rest of the solder
To Be continued
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