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Head-Fi - Alien DAC Construction Thread
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LOL! Are you in the USA? If so, I would order from Glass Jar Audio for a kit and a case (might have to e-mail him about it). It makes your first venture into DIY painless as you can worry on construction and less about a BOM.
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USB comes with the kit. You may need a 3.5mm jack and maybe an LED. Some wire for the jacks and LED (depending on where you put it). I put my LED and 3.5mm jack in front, USB in back. I've seen people put it into a mint tin.
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600 should be fine as I did ~600-650 and everything works, at least from the short test I did. What you have to watch out for are the hold times. Keep it short and quick. For that, I like a hot iron. I find lower temps makes me hold longer to reflow, which doesn't work as well. Use a wick and clean up as much as you can on the pads, ignore the legs for the time being. Then…
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Wow, 260C is pretty low. I just assembled mine this weekend and used about 650F. It was my first time doing an SMT project and I lost C1 in it's packaging entirely (waiting for Jeff to get more) and had a learning experience with tweezers...spring loaded == bad. I also have to thank Jeff for helping me out and responding to my e-mails of (oops, I just lost C21, and there goes…