MSL parts storage and care for the hobbyist/small business

[bob808]

Got some 3535 ws2812 (or compatible). Tested about 15 and they all were bad.
After reading this thread I decided to try and remove the moisture from them. 
I baked one kg of table salt and I put it with the leds in some tupperware. How long should I leave them for? I'm planning in diy-ing an electric oven sometime in the near future. 
There should be enough desiccant for the amount of moisture they could have stored in them, just that I have no idea how long should I leave them for. Would a couple of days do?

[Siwastaja]

No, don't use desiccant to remove moisture from the components, especially not something corrosive like table salt. Most desiccants are likely not good enough to suck enough moisture out at room temperature, or it will take forever.

Just bake the parts using standard baking procedures (see Google). Using high enough temperature drives the moisture out in sensible time. The idea is to use lower-than-reflow temperature so that the parts won't crack from water evaporating too quickly; but high enough temperature so that the water is eventually (in a hour or two) forced out, through the plastic.

[asmi]

I think a standard baking procedure is 4 hrs at 125° C and parts needs to be used within 30 minutes after baking.

[bob808]

Oh damn, so I need to make an oven after all.  Need to source a solid state relay locally.
Then I'll remove the leds from the salt. Thank you for the heads up!

A temperature controlled oven would also allow me to dry my 3d printer filament. Think a 30-35l oven would do. My gas oven is not easy to control. 30 minutes is not enough as I wand to solder the leds on a keyboard. 68 leds, and I must solder them by hand as the rest of the pcb is already populated on both sides.

[SMTech]

If they really are that damp, I would suggest you're looking at  a much longer bake than a few hours but at a lower temp. After that store them in one of those vacuum tubs you can get for food,  with a desiccant pouch which you may also want to bake first.

[wraper]

Regular electric kitchen oven should do the job. Just check temperature with thermocouple or set temperature on lower side to account for possible inaccuracy.

[bob808]

I'll try to measure my gas oven and see where it sits at min. 
I should do that electric oven as it's really useful. I kept having the need for one once in a while but it never warranted to make one. But all bets are off if I can't get rgb on my keyboard 

[jmelson]

I'll try to measure my gas oven and see where it sits at min. 
I should do that electric oven as it's really useful. I kept having the need for one once in a while but it never warranted to make one. But all bets are off if I can't get rgb on my keyboard 

Nope, burning natural gas produces water!  (Hydrogen plus Oxygen = water)  So, you really want an electric oven, even a little toaster oven set to
run at 50 - 70 C will bake out your parts.  Some tapes are REALLY sensitive to the heat, so that may limit your ability to bake parts that are still in the tape.

Jon

[bob808]

I got them out of the tape. 
I'm curious if I can do it with a sandwich maker 
SSR comes in tomorrow and I wanna test this. Should be fun.

[DavidMenting]

I really wish that reputable companies like TI & Osram would team up to make a decent quality LED with internal control. Even if several times the cost of WS2812s, it would still be cheaper than the current solution I have to use on any permanent installation of seperate LEDs and drivers.

It's not Osram, but LiteOn does have a new line of LEDs with embedded control: https://optoelectronics.liteon.com/en-global/Led/LED-Component/Index/1/211#cate1

Regarding the SK6812: we've gone through dozens of reels of SK6812mini from the I-wouldn't-call-sketchy supplier @funbags mentioned. The failure rate of these LEDs is not particularly high. Definitely better than the failure rates I see mentioned on WS2812 LEDs.