However, as with most projects on my bench, there are challenges with each project. No different with this project either.
This board was etched by a laser machine and it is a very nice looking board. The trace clearances are somewhat tight and the through holes are not plated. The clearances did present some challenges with a few solder bridges that proved to difficult to remove in a couple of cases. After using a solder sucker and solder wick, the shorts had still remained. Even under a well lit magnifying glass the short could not be seen. Scrapping with a dental tool in one case did not help but a rub with a small fine wire brush did work.
The other self inflected problem, one that I can never seem to avoid, was, well, stupidity. I knew the via's were not through plated and I was given some fine wire to use where necessary. Yet I still managed to forget this and went ahead and soldered in headers tight to the board when I needed to allow a space in order to apply solder. Gave the solder sucker a really good workout and I'll bet I used up more solder wick on this project than all the others I've done combined. HiHi. But thanks to the quality of the board, it survived the abuse.
About 6 hours into the build so far and today I shall carry on with installing headers and connecting up the via's
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