Soldering
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This community is for electronic hobbyists to discuss projects and is focused on soldering. Everyone is welcome from the noob to people who have been soldering as a hobby for decades to people who solder professionally. We'll talk about materials and techniques, equipment, and projects. Everyone is welcome. All questions are welcome. Post photos and ask for help.
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#Soldering Tools
Most soldering iron manufacturers make some sort of soldering tools or soldering aids. They are an assortment of little pokers and hooks and forks and pry tools. I've looked at them from time to time but all I've ever used are the little plastic things that come with Weller consumer soldering irons.
I love these things. They used to have a fork on one end but I find the poker MUCH more useful so I just sanded a blunt one on one end and sharpened the one on the other end. I always have one near and often in my left hand when I'm soldering. I use them to position small components and hold them while I'm soldering them. I push and pry and poke things with them. I like them so much that I reached out to Weller about buying more. They don't sell them individually but sent me a few in the mail. Awesome customer support!
#Scalpel
The only other thing that I can think of that's part of my tools and materials is a pair of scalpel handles and blades.
This is a No. 3 handle with a No. 11 blade and a No. 4 handle with a No. 22 blade. I use these for all kinds of cutting and scraping operations. I use them for placing stickers and cutting header strips. They are an invaluable tool. You can buy plastic scalpel handles for $1. These stainless steel surgical handles are less than $10 each. The blades you can buy expired in boxes of 50 or 100 for a very reasonable price. You can even cut thin copper wire with these blades.
I think that's everything for now. I might think of something else later and come back and add it. I'll pin this post to the community.
Comments, additions, and questions are welcome.
I remembered another thing!
#Pinchy Things
I have a drawer labelled "TOOLS" and a drawer labelled "PLIERS". Anything scissor like goes in the PLIERS drawer.
In this picture from left to right are:
Flush cutting pliers. They're like side cutters or diagonal cutters but they are ground on one side only so you can cut really, REALLY close to the board. The blades are normally fairly soft so you can only cut soft things like copper wires and component leads. You can buy REALLY expensive ones but these are cheap, house brand ones that I buy at Princess Auto three or four at a time. Seriously, I have like 12 pairs. There are 3 pairs in my PLIERS drawer right now. Next are cabling scissors. They look like hell but they are amazing. One blade is serrated so that wires don't slip out as you cut them. They're tough as well and can cut through anything short of a nail (though they will cut through some small nails.) Next is a pair of little scissors that I use for cutting labels and things of that type. Tweezers are important for handling small components. I have a stainless steel pair, a squeeze open stainless steel pair, and a ESD safe coated stainless steel pair. The squeeze open ones are awesome because you squeeze them open and the spring closed. You can use them to hold wires or small components while you solder them. Far right is a small pair of cheap side cutters. I use those for anything I don't want to use my flush cutters for. Their blades are hardened better than the flush cutters so they don't damage as easily.
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#Isopropyl Alcohol
If you're soldering you need isopropyl alcohol (or another alcohol. I have methyl, ethyl, and isopropyl in wash bottles under my desk all the time. Be forewarned that if you're using methyl the molecule is small enough to move through your skin easily and it's toxic so be cautious.) I have a wash bottle under my desk. I keep a little pill bottle full of isopropyl alcohol on my desk that I drop little boards in when I build them and shake to clean. You'll also need a little brush but I'll cover that next.
You need to clean the flux off your solder joints because your boards look nasty if you don't and the flux can corrode the traces on the board and the pins on your components.
#Brushes
I use a simple acid brush that you can buy individually or in bags of 10 at any hardware store for a couple of dollars.
I drill a small hole through the ferrule and put an M3 machine screw through with washers on either side to hold the bristles in place. I then cut the bristles down so that they are shorter and stiffer.
When I'm cleaning I add isopropyl alcohol, scrub with the acid brush, then rinse with clean isopropyl alcohol.
#KimWipes
This is one that I've had around for years but didn't think to use when soldering. They are a laboratory wipe and they are lint free. I use them with isopropyl alcohol to wipe anything I don't want to leave a bunch of lint on. They're relatively expensive but if you only use them for cleaning with alcohol a box will likely last you for years. You can buy KimWipes on Amazon by the box.
#Polyamide/Kapton Tape
This stuff is AWESOME! If you've taken apart old electronics of seen inside a spacecraft you've likely seen kapton tape. It's the same color as old amber beer bottles. The nice thing about it is that it's tolerant of extremely high temperatures. You can tape things down that you're soldering and it won't melt unless you heat it directly. It's good from -269°C (-452°F) up to 400°C (752°F). The stuff is magic.
#Solder Removal - Solder Wick
When you're soldering things you're eventually going to want to desolder something. The first thing most people use is solder wick. It's a braid of fine copper wires coated in flux. You place the solder wick on the solder joint, heat is up, the solder melts, and wicks into the solder wick. With practice you can get good at removing components with solder wick.
You will move on from solder wick, though, to a solder sucker at some point. Keep the solder wick. I use it after I've removed components with the solder sucker to really clean up the pads in preparation for resoldering.
#Solder Removal - Solder Sucker
The venerable solder sucker. It's a spring loaded monstrosity that does a decent job in certain circumstances. When you only have access to one side of the board you have to heat the joint, remove the soldering iron, place the solder sucker, and press the button before the solder melts hoping that you remembered to push down the plunger. They can be frustrating to use. When you have access to both sides of the board you can heat from one side and suck from the other. With practice you can suck the solder out of a join so completely that the component lead just pulls or falls out of the hole.
#Tip Cleaner/Tip Tinner
Maintenance of your soldering iron tip is essential. A clean, well tinned tip makes everything about soldering easier. In fact, in aerospace soldering you clean the solder wire and cut a short piece, clean the joint to be soldered, and clean and tin your tip before soldering each joint. I ordered a copper scrubber style tip cleaner off AliExpress. Just between us, I ordered 4 because they were cheap. I modified mine by adding a disk of thick steel to the inside of the base and a silicone rubber disk to the outside so that it doesn't move around. I quickly stick my tip in every two or three joints then get right back into the soldering. When I'm ready to put my iron away at the end of the session I jab it in three or four times moving it around to really clean off the tip then I heavily tin the tip, shake off the excess, and hang up my iron in the holder.
The tip tinner is a mixture of solder powder and aggressive flux. You turn your iron up high, melt it into the cleaner, then stir it around a bit. It really cleans up and tins your tip.
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In this post I'm going to try to pull together some photos, some comments, and some advice from my more than 40 years of hobby soldering.
The most important advice that I can give you is to buy the best tools and materials that you can afford. You don't need to start with a $1,000 soldering station but buy the best iron you can afford. I strongly recommend buying a basic pencil iron from a well known brand for your first iron.
#Soldering Iron
You can buy a Weller for USD$30 or Hakko for USD$50. Either of those irons is a great place to start. If you can't afford one of those then get what you can afford. The iron isn't as important as other things that I'm going to talk about.
#Solder
The next thing to consider is solder. Buy good solder. Most good solders you can buy in small, affordable quantities. I buy solder in 125g (1/4 lb), 250g (1/2 lb), and 500g (1 lb) rolls and they last a LONG time. If you're not doing a lot of solder you can buy a tube and it will do you for a good, long while. Again, I recommend buying a good brand name solder. I use MG and Kester and Multicore. They are all great solders. You want to get a rosin or flux core solder.
Here's a picture of the solders that I have on my desk right now.
They are (from upper left clockwise):
FSH 6045 CKF
This one is actually a silver brazing solder. It's 45% silver and used when you really, REALLY want things to stay stuck together.
MG 4900-112G 0.032" (0.81mm) Sn96.2/Ag2.8/Cu0.4
This is a strong, lead free silver containing solder that I use for important repairs where I want a strong, lead free joint.
Kester 24-6040-0053 0.050" (1.27mm) Sn60/Pb40
This is a medium weight tin/lead solder. I use this one for heavier through hole components and heavier wires.
Multicore 370 Flux 0.064" (1.63mm) Sn63/Pb37
This is the heaviest solder that I keep on my desk. This is another tin/lead solder and I use it for heavy filling and heavy wires. If I'm going to solder a power cable or a wire on my trailer this is the one I use.
Kester 24-6337-0001 0.10" (0.25mm) Sn63/Pb37
This is the other end of the solder spectrum. This tin/lead solder is the lightest solder that own. It's extremely fine and I use it for soldering the smallest of surface mount components. I use this when I'm using a needle tip on my PES51 pencil iron to solder an 0402 surface mount resistor.
Kester EP256 Sn63/Pb37
This one is a tin/lead paste solder. I've used it a couple of times but all of the soldering that I do on a regular basis is done with an iron and wire solder so this is more of a novelty on my desk in case I ever need it.
MG 4884-227G 0.025" (0.64mm) Sn63/Pb37
This one is my go-to solder for just about everything. It's a tin/lead solder that's small enough for small surface mount components but big enough for larger through hole components as well. When I reach for solder 99.5% of the time it's this one that I'm reaching for.
#Flux
Buy liquid flux.
Seriously. It's life changing. I bought liquid flux for the first time a few years ago after soldering for more than three decades and I can't believe that I struggled for as long as I did without it. You know how when you reheat a joint the solder gets all rough and you get peaks and points that you can never get to go away? A drop of liquid flux on the joint and it's beautiful, smooth, and shiny.
Did I mention that you should buy liquid flux?
I use Kester 186 liquid flux. You can buy it in little squeeze bottles on Ebay. Flood your work with liquid flux. I literally cover what I'm working on in liquid flux. It's a bigger-hammer solution but it makes life so much easier.
Seriously, go to Ebay right now and buy some liquid flux.
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Yes, it worked perfectly! The repaired broken line was apparently power to the LED backlight.
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This was the first time I've used a stencil and solder paste to build up a pcb. It was so much easier to get all the components aligned and soldered on the board (on the back, there are 38 0603 capacitors which are always time consuming to hand solder). After just had to clear a few bridges and added a little extra solder to U1.
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I recently got this cheap USB dac thats plugged into my pc over USB - B but it still needs Micro USB power for some reason. So I thought I could just connect the 5V from the USB A port to the Micro usb's. Is there any reason why this doesn't work?
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I'm working on replacing the Schneider SmartRelay on an Atlas Vista 613 wheelchair lift that I bought for my dad. The Atlas technician agrees that the SmartRelay is probably shot and the replacement is $1,000 wholesale. I built a replacement using an Arduino Nano, a UNL2803A Darlington array, a switching 7805, a bunch of Zener diodes, and a handfull of Schneider industrial relays.
Unfortunately, I let the smoke out of my very last Nano and needed to keep the project moving. So...I took a small piece of protoboard, an Arduino ProMini 168, and some jumper wire and created this Frankenduino. It's the same pinout as the Nano with none of the nice supporting stuff like an ICP port, USB, voltage regulators, etc. It will keep the development moving while I'm waiting for the 10 Nanos I have on order to arrive.
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With maple syrup season fast approaching (4 months ish) my thoughts have turned to working on the Sapmaster once again. I'm going to design and build a new top and bottom board this year to fit in the BUD DMB-4774 DIN case that I use for the SapMaster controller. That's going to involve a bunch of SMD soldering which reminded me of the irritation that soldering with loose pieces of SMD tape causes me.
To that end, I went looking for an SMD dispenser cartridge that would meet my needs. I couldn't find one so I decided to design my own.
This is version 4.1 of the design. It holds around 5 feet of standard 8mm paper tape which is around 1,000 components. The tape comes out the straight slot at the upper right. The clear cover tape goes out the curved slot and can be hooked under the little pin upper left. The point of the splitter between the straight and curved slots holds the components in place so they don't fall out before you pull the tape out of the slot.
I will generally use single cartridges with a cover but the friends I work with say that they want them to connect together. I considered a number of options but they all involved pins and holes or tabs and slots and I wanted the individual covered cartridges to be nice and clean. What I settled on are the holes you see around the corners of this cartridge. The accept a standard LEGO Technics connecting pin and allow you to gang together any number of cartridges.
I'm all setup to make versions for different widths and thicknesses of tape as well. The cover has four LEGO Technics like pins to plug into the holes in the cartridge.
I expect to start printing some to actually use in a few days when the magnetic base plate for my 3D printer arrives.
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I've posted a few videos now of myself soldering header strips and some SMDs with my good quality soldering tools and with an inexpensive soldering iron that I bought at Walmart. I sent a link to the friends, the hardware designed and programmer, who I often work with. One designs the boards, the other programs them. I do some of their fine soldering work for them.
They were amused by the Walmart soldering iron videos and remarked that they were surprised that soldering QFPs was even possible with that iron.
That got us to talking and me to thinking. What is the difference between the tools and materials and the technique used by someone who makes it look easy and the tools and materials and the technique used by beginners who struggle?
I would like to propose that the biggest issue that beginners have is flux management.
Electronic solder isn't a solid metal wire. The solder we use for electronics most often includes flux. The flux is included in one or more cores inside the solder wire.
Multicore solder, which I use, even has these cores in their logo.
Here is the Multicore solder I have sitting on my desk.
I believe that many of the problems beginners run into involve not understanding the role of flux or how short lived it is. If you apply solder to your soldering iron the flux is gone in a second or two. The solder will them oxidize and refuse to stick to anything. Effective soldering, soldering that looks easy, involves getting the heat into the parts, applying the right amount of solder quickly and smoothly, then removing the heat before the flux has burned off. This is my going back and touching up your joints causes so many problems. The solder is dry (no flux) and oxidized and doesn't cooperate.
If you've watched my SOIC-8 or QFP-32 soldering videos you will see that I apply liquid flux. This is because I apply the solder to my soldering iron then drag solder the pins. The flux has all burned off of the solder and it will not stick to the pins without the liquid flux. I also used liquid flux in the Fixing Bad Solder video.
So...I believe that a good understanding of the role and short lifespan of solder will help beginners to make better solder joints.
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When I started soldering everything was big and had leads that went through holes in the board. You inserted the leads, bent them over to hold the component, flipped the board over, soldered everything, and trimmed off the excess leads.
Now I'm soldering things down to 0402 SMDs (1/4 the size of the smallest component in the picture) using a needle point soldering tip and a microscope.
A pair of 2N2222 transistors, one SOT23 and one TO-92.
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I got myself a T12 clone station recently. I've only had a junk iron that plugs into a wall socket and heats up to full blast whatever temperature with the big giant tip. Not very useful for more precise work.
I had this damaged Arduino Pro Micro clone sitting in my box of random stuff. At some point in time I had decided cut out out 4 pin headers for some reason. Damaged the corresponding traces in the process.
The repair worked! It was the MOSI, MISO, CLK, and RESET pins on the board. These pins can be used to have this board flash another Arduino board.
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I did this last week before finding this group, so no pictures of my soldering. I take it that the purpose is intended to be general electronics?
I bought a used tube amp for $400 (great price, I think), but it was noisy and smelled of smoke. I took it apart to wipe down the insides with isopropynol. I discovered the filter caps were leaking--no surprise really.
$50 of parts later, I replaced the larger capacitors and made a few tweaks to the tone stack. Sounds good for $450.
Maybe I'll post some more stuff later. I'm working on a custom mechanical keyboard with an interesting design. Still working out the kinks.
SAFETY NOTICE: don't open a tube amp without knowing what you're doing! Those big capacitors can carry enough voltage to kill.
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