I have bought Pieco Paste Press and T5 solder as an emergency replacement for my pneumatic paste dispenser. I work with 10mil pitch ICs and I was hoping that I can use Pieco with 27ga and even 30ga needle. However, I had problems with dispensing and have shared my experiences with Johnathan.

He took all my problems on board, supplied me with new Pieco Press and new batch of T5 solder paste and even gave me set of dispensing needles. After warming up solder paste to 60 degrees C I was able to use Pieco Press with 27ga needle.

Well, this is more than just great after sale support - this is an unprecedented dedication for a customer to succeed with product Jonathan sales.

Once again thank you Jonathan!

Cheers

Adam

I've the full set of needles and tried T5 leaded with Pieco-Paste-Press.

It worked great. Even the violet colored thin 30Ga needles worked with T5!

The only problem I see is that you need to get used to control the dispenser.

Overall, a nice way to get little dabs of paste right where you want them. It is lightweight, even when loaded, and doesn't get in the way when applying paste in tight areas (under a microscope). I really like how you can hold it like a pencil: sandwiched between your thumb and middle finger, you can use your index finger to actuate the dispensing lever. You don't need to apply that much pressure to get it to go, but be careful that you watch out for pressure build up in the syringe, and release the piston before you put it down, otherwise a bit might creep out.

If I could change anything about this, it would really only be the dispensing lever. The lever can swing a total of about 25 degrees or so, but only 12 of those do anything. The other 12 degrees are just extra traversing space, and it is sort of bothersome. The fix would probably be to change the design of the little sheet of metal at the end of the lever that pushes the plunger rod foreword, but if you don't want to modify it yourself, find a stronger spring to replace the larger of the two, and that'll keep the lever from jiggling.

This device makes it much easier and more precise to lay down paste by hand.

I purchased and tried
-Type-5 leaded paste
-Type-5 low temp paste
-Needle assortment kit

The 25 and 23 ga needles worked fine. The 25ga is great for 0.5mm to 2mm pitch parts. The 23ga is faster for 1mm to 2mm pitch stuff. Large SMT parts I found were faster without the press and just using the syringe cap with a hole in it. Smaller than 0.5mm pitch is possible, but you run the risk of shorts and balls. Anything smaller than 0.9mm pitch, I recommend magnification when applying it.

When using these needles it was fairly easy to set the flow rate with the paste press. The flow didn't stop, but that's an issue with the paste press and not these needles.

The 27ga needle was too small for even this Type-5 paste. The paste's ball size is small, but not small enough for this size needle. If you get it to flow through the 27 or 30 ga needles, you have different paste than I did. I tried all five 27ga needles with everything from cold, warm and hot paste. The paste was fresh, the press was new. Neither the leaded or lead-free-low-temp stuff would flow. I nearly cracked the syringe trying to get it to flow.

Do yourself a favor and just by the 23 and 25ga needles separate.

To clean the paste out of the needles, stand them upright in 90% isopropyl alcohol using a pen cap or something like that. Tape the pen cap to something with a little bit of vibration and come back in an hour. You might need to replace the alcohol once if the needle 'just' fit in the pen cap. I taped mine to my PC case...the fan is old.

I was able to use the 27ga needles to dispense epoxy (one time use here), but they worked great in this application.

Overall I'm happy with the press, paste and 25ga/23ga needles. The 27ga needles were a disappointment, but I found they were not needed anyway and it was only a couple bucks. No worries.