I tried another board this morning. These cheap test boards are a challenge as they have no solder mask between the QFP pins. (I should not object, as they are like $5 with all of the parts, shipped).

Pics in order – Paste applied, parts installed, out of the oven, touch up a few parts with the Hakko. Still a few bridges on the SOICs I didn’t clean up, and those little 0805 resistor packs didn’t flow well either.

I drag soldered across the QFP pins and it quickly cleaned them up. One one side I had to use a bit of wick, which might suggest I had a bit too much solder paste.

On the small components I tried a few different amounts of paste, and the ones that felt a little light did indeed up with not enough to flow correctly. If you look at the SOT-23 transistors, the top one had the most solder paste, and the lowest two a bit less, but all of them look ok.

I’ll do a few more of this, then switch to a board with better solder mask.