Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer
You can apparently obtain solder in small uniform ball sizes, that are used to re-ball BGA's from unleaded to leaded for people exempt from using lead-free, for best reliability. But may not be easily available to those not doing the re-balling process, that actually often seemed to result in damaged IC's.
Practical Electronics magazine recently had a project to make a SMD-Reflow unit based on a "Pizza" oven. And no doubt Elektor and details online many years ago. I do know a few people who've done this, with one at least just using it as is, with a thermocouple and manually stepping temperature up & down. But I think others had made their own controller boards.
I've had some solder paste in the fridge for > 20years, since I bought a surplus unopened pot. But never got round to trying it.
The only time I used paste was in a syringe, with twist-on fine metal nozzle > 25yrs ago at work, to build up solder on pads on a alumina substrate as trying to use a soldering iron on it when not pre-heated to 150degC etc. could result in the gold leeching away, as it wasn't palladium etc. plated.
I know you could get compressed air attachments to dispense controlled amounts of solder from these, for production.
Silver-loaded epoxy usually has a quite short shelf life, of a few months
- Even when stored in a fridge. And often not cheap from RS etc
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