Undiluted Platinum

Well i've successfully installed Undiluted Platinum and i forgot to take photos :(

But i still Have some hints for people out there who want them

1) Tools:
Make sure your soldering iron is as fine as it can be, if you havew a fat one like me just wack it on the metal lathe and hone it down a little, DO NOT USE A FILE, And tin it a little afterwards. After i did this to mine it was sooooo much easier considering my tip was a 1mm fatty.

Also, for scratching off the soldermask i reccomend ummmmm not using a utility knife, although the tracks are strong and hard to break i used an AWL precision screwdriver, one that basically goes down to a point, it worked really well.

2) Wire:
Buy some spare and make sure its got a coloured coating unlike the transperant coating on the supplied wire, its really hard to tin the wire when you cant tell if the wires coated at the end.

3) Clenliness:
Use methylated spirits or a similar quick evaporating alchohol. In any soldering job it is vital that all surfaces are clean. Its also a good idea to use a resin core solder as when you tin the track flux goes everywere making the soldering so much easier. If scum begins to build up all over where yuo are soldering and you cant see a bloody thing :mad: Just at some metho' (an australian coloquial term for methylated spirits) and use an old tooth brush to scrub it clean.

4) Glue:
NOT ALL HOT GLUE WORKS!!! The hot glue i tried just dried up and didn't stick, this is because the PCB is coated in wax which not many glues stick too. Use a rubbery glue like Contact cement or the one i used Araldyte, the best fricken glue in the world :D. Use double sided take to cover up the BTN joins and hold dowm the FPC cable. When you finish put blobs of glue behind the joins so that you can add more solder ing required

5) Magnification:
Good news, you dont need to buy a 10x microscope if you have a decent DV camera like mine, my Panasonic has a heaps good macro lense and worked fantastic, which i remembered to get some stills though, sorry guys :rolleyes:
Just set up your camera on a tripod so that it looks directly sown on the board for optimum quality and simply use some RCA cables to hook it up to your TV and you have a great view of the work site!

6)Mistakes :mad:
If when you are scrathcing the soldermask or cutting one of the traces and you damage an adjacent trace or scrath through it DO NOT PANIC, IT IS EASILY FIXED!! All you have to do is remember is that there is still heaps of track you can use so if a trace is damaged , (check by using a multimeter for a continuty test, set to about 200 - 20k Ohms if you get a 0 good, a 1 bad, between not good but not bad either ;) ) just scrath away some soldermask on either side of track and solder wire from bothe points to the tracks corresonding letter on the FPC cable, see easily fixed :o

Thats about all i can say for now, if you need any more help PM me or post here and someone else may help you first ;)