Soldering an Opto-Stop

Got my parts from mouser today. I was kinda worried that it would be a jumbled mess of unlabeled components that would need to be carefully inventoried and organized; couldn't have been more wrong, every component came in a separate bag with bar code and description. I am going to try making an optostop first to see if my hands are steady enough to solder all these components (no coffee in 6 hours). If I am not mistaken I only actually need 3 of the limit switches so these are also probably the best thing to screw up if I am going to ruin something.

Here is my setup:


I am using the build instructions from the Make a "Darwin" pages, linky. First thing I noticed is that there is an inconsistency on the Resistor numbering. The BOM has R1 and R2 reversed in the table. You can see the silk screened names are different in the pictures on the instructional page and on the boards. I am going to follow the markings on the board 10K = R1 and 220 = R2.

8:47: Alright here goes, crappy radioshack soldering iron is hot, lets see how it goes.

9:19: Success, after a few minutes of trying to use the iron at 20W I turned it up to 40W and I was rolling. Soldered a solid 12 joints, at this pace I should be done sometime around winter. Tested it with a power supply and multi-meter and it worked. Got 4.97 V when it was blocked and it seemed to be floating at around .5 to .9V when it was open.

Open:

Blocked: (White thing is a slip of paper)



That wasn't too bad. I think I will try to do at least 2 more before I leave for the night.