EPS Electronics Assembly
Author: Alexander Doknjas
A core goal of the ORCASat project is to provide unmatched opportunities for students to gain skills in space science and technology. It’s part of our mission statement: train Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP) by developing a space mission. We embraced that to the fullest and decided to design, manufacture, assemble, test every subsystem of the ORCASat spacecraft. With the exception of the Attitude Control and Determination System (purchased as a commercial off the shelf subsystem from CubeSpace), this means all the electronics that form the subsystems are assembled here at the University of Victoria by students.
Our electronics assembly lab consists of a manual solder paste printer and a batch reflow oven, which are the essential tools for small-scale reflow soldering. We apply solder paste to the Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) using a stencil and a manual solder paste printer. Once the paste is applied, components are placed on their corresponding footprints by hand using either tweezers, or a vacuum pick-up tool. Once all the components are placed, the PCB is placed into a solder reflow oven that ramps the temperature up above the solder paste melting point, and the components are soldered to the PCB. Once the PCB has been soldered, it is brought under a microscope and is visually inspected for any soldering defects.
We filmed a time-lapse of this whole process happening for the EPS v2 electronics assembly. We also have a GIF that shows the PCB being soldered in the oven. You can see the solder paste turn into permanent solder connections.
