Newbie soldering thread

lrn 2 smd

don't breath in the fumes too much

Magnifying lamp.

Flux is your friend.
Thick solder (anything greater than 0.8mm or so dia, ~0.5 or a bit less is ideal) is useless and should be avoided unless you are soldering something huge (like a heat sink).
Use proper soldering station with an adjustable temp.
Use a chisel/screwdriver tip and not a pencil tip, you get better contact which means it heats the work faster.
Solder is applied to the work, not the tip. You heat the work and /it/ melts the solder.

Most often forgotten piece of advice; tin your tips. They'll last infinitely longer if you keep them properly tinned.

Also lead solder has a really bad rep these days but it really is much easier to work with than lead-free formulations.

>>1026373
Pretty much this. Except I'd add something on his last point - even though you don't apply solder from the tip to your work, it's good to keep your tip wet with solder to make a better heat bridge. Wet tip means greater contact area between the tip and the element and thus better heat transfer.

>>1026388
>>1026392
Ty, and yes I should have mentioned tinning the tips.

I use 60/40 rosin core, but you should keep some lead-free, silver-lead, etc if you are doing repairs. It is best to match whatever solder is already on a work.

And like any skill: take it slow and practice, practice, practice. Soldering isn't really /hard/ but there is a technique to it, and you'll only master it by actually doing it. Neatness counts! Don't be stingy with solder, but I said to use thin solder to give you control, don't glob it on.

Same with desoldering, which is almost as an important skill. Get a solder sucker, keep solder wick on hand (either pre-fluxed or apply flux). Practice this too, keep an eye out for discarded electronics and remove components from the PCB. You can get some free parts for building prototypes (I'd almost never used a scrapped component for a final build) and you practice desoldering.

If you do a lot of surface mount, get a hot air station, they can be had for 50-70USD. A proper soldering station should be ~100USD, and maybe 20-30USD for a few proper tips.

Another thing that is often forgotten is to keep everything clean. Remember that there is natural grease on your hands, so it's a good idea to wipe what you want to solder with alcohol.

>>1026404
Flux should take care of that, as will the heat of the iron (~400F is going to burn off or at least vaporize any organics), but yes, it is best to avoid excessive handling. The real issue is acids on your fingers causing corrosion. A little 91% isopropyl is good for cleaning up the flux residue though.

The two main enemies of a good solder joint are insufficiently heated work and oxidized/corroded surfaces. Flux takes care of the latter and solder-to-work not solder-to-iron takes care of the former.

>>1026362
There is only one thing that matters in soldering, and that is heat conductivity.
If you have poor surface contact, you will have poor heat conductivity. Nothing will melt.

Which is why in the old 80's videos (still good by the way), you will see them tin the tip so that the molten solder on the tip is touching the wire.
The molten solder sticks to the wire, causing higher surface contact, meaning increased heat conductivity.

That's when you give the wire the good ol' reacharound with the solder and apply solder to the opposite side of the wire (to ensure that the wire is heated enough, in order to prevent cold solder joints)

That's pretty much the basics.
Anyways, if it takes longer than 3 seconds to solder a joint, you're doing something wrong.

>>1026415
And yes, poor heat conductivity will lead you to touch the iron to the wire longer than necessary, leading to you burning sensitive parts (ICs, speaker drivers) down the wire.

Passive parts don't give a shit though.

>>1026417
>>1026415
For a more technical breakdown, watch this series of videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIT4ra6Mo0s

>>1026417
For what it's worth I don't think I've ever burned a part with heat. Generally the board/pads will get fucked up before the parts do.

OP here. I'm learning a ton! Thank you all keep it up!

- Learn with lead free (it's not any harder)
- Get a adjustable temp iron. Even the non feedback loop ones are better. ( Don't over spend either, China has lots of high quality cheap irons)

- Don't fear smd components
- get a bright light and a third hand
- don't think it's hard.


I had a shitty iron and thought for the longest time I just sucked at soldering. Then I tried a half decent iron. Turns out I'm actually really good.

Soldering is really easy. It's only hard with shit tools. Bad cheap solder will be a pain (got some cheap rolls from China, totally useless)

>>1026435

I have.

The worst is mechanical stuff like pots or jacks ( I have some RCA jacks that are particularly bad for this) smd switches are bad too.

>>1026362
>buy a moderately priced iron
>find something that's fucking borked
>fuck around with it, remove shit, repopulate them
>burn yourself a couple times
>?????
>pro(solderer)

got an adjustable iron from china but the tips are way too big

sauce for some hollow micro-chisel tips that are not crazy expensive?

and about tinning:
new tips? how often? which product? (one on amzn is $8)

I'd like to get a better pair of helping hands and swap out the magnifier with a much higher X

>>1026362

Soldering isn't that hard.

Actual development and testing is the real challenge.

>>1026560

You need new tips whenever they corrode. If your tips are corroding after moderate use, you need better tips.

>>1026585
I meant tinning new tips

>>1026560
Just re-tin your tips after you're done soldering.
Solder is not so expensive that you have to pinch every square inch of it.

I bet if you bought a roll of that Quad Eutectic, you'd have enough for a decade.

When I buy equipment, I generally buy the cheapest set that is not shit.
In the case of soldering that happens to be the Hakko FX-951. It is the cheapest option, but still fairly expensive (~$200).
This is because the machine will never fuck up on you. Anything that goes wrong will be your fault, and there's a sort of peace of mind that gives you, because it cuts down an entire class of problems you might end up having.

Don't cheap out on tips, solder, flux, or an iron. Yes, a good soldering station can be 100USD+ vs 25-35USD for a reasonably cheap iron, but good tools will save you money in the long run, not just longer lasting tips, but shitty tools will ruin components and boards: Burn a trace on a 50$ custom PCB you had printed and you'll know why getting the proper tools was worth it. Consider it an investment on reducing the risk you take with everything that iron ever touches.

If you are serious about something, as a hobby or a job, good tools will pay for themselves. Either by saving you time, frustration, confusion, or in materials you didn't waste/ruin.

>>1026362
Best simple advice. Heat what you are soldering / the metal before applying the tin.

One thing I discovered lately is that if in addition to opening a window while soldering I use some cheap fan to blow the fumes from under my nose, my headaches magically stop.
Gee, I wonder if there's some correlation.

>>1026373
>Use a chisel/screwdriver tip and not a pencil tip
depends on what your soldering

%triforce

Don't use lead free solder if you're soldering big components and you might need to rework them.
It has a higher melting point and it's an absolute cunt to get it to melt while the component is just eating up the heat.
Usually end up just melting the component

>>1026362
DO NOT use acid based flux or acid flux cored solder, your solder tip will disintegrate after a few hours of use. had this happen twice before i looked it up to find out what was going on

I almost never work in PCBs or small electronics, but I find myself needing to solder occasionally for larger surface area projects as an industrial instrumentation and controls specialist.

For soldering two wires together (stranded or solid), my favorite method is to hook them together, then twist the ends opposite directions from the knuckle unitil it is tight, hold them twisted, and cover the whole joint in solder. It's the only way I've found to get <5 micro-ohm joints in solid 18awg that will actually hold up to tension.

If you want to solder a wire to like flat piece of metal, I typically drill a hole in it a little bigger than the wire, lather EVERYTHING in flux, feed it through and loop the wire back to itself. Flatten the wires with pliers, then gob the solder on the wire around the hole. I find it works best to heat up the terminal and wire at the same time with your iron, then just stick the solder on around the hole and let it flow where it wants to until the blob is big enough to keep the wire from pulling out.

If you can't drill a hole in the metal strip back like ~3x more than you usually would and lay the entire length of it flat to the surface and get it all covered in solder. It should look like a weld seam with a conductor sticking out one end. For a stranded 10awg I'll typically lay down around 3/4" of wire and get the mound of solder to pretty much cover it.

>a lot of the stuff where I work is held together by old duct tape and runs on prayers

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>>1027141
This might help visualize

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>>1026613
>tfw you've been using an $8 iron with its original tip for years and have never ruined anything.

>>1027144
How the hell do you even tie them together that tightly?

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>>1027148

>>1026373
>Use a chisel/screwdriver tip and not a pencil tip, you get better contact which means it heats the work faster

This, I have to use the side of my pencil tip (was a $15 adjustable heat station so why not) to get any meaningful heat; precision heating a wire or component doesn't happen.

>>1027147
>tfw every time I bought a <20$ iron, it never got hot enough and would completely break on the third use

man FUCK soldering i just use a pressurized lighter now

Is there some special trick to soldering headphone cables? I've tried to fix the same cable 5 times today and it never works properly, the sound always comes out wrong in one ear.

>>1027148
It requires a fair decent amount of slack. If you have slack, then it's simple as hell with pliers.

if you solder your own bowden cable ends you'll be using zinc chloride flux for galv wire and that's pretty safe,
but you'll be using phosphoric acid for stainless wire. here's the protip: when you dip the acid-soaked cable end into the solder pot keep your fuckin face away from the acid steam!

>>1028462
The phonographic bits tend to not enjoy getting hot. Perhaps the heat wandered too far up the conductor. Also, when there's a bunch of points all right next to each other it's easy to get a solder bridge to act as a conductor where it wasn't intended.

>>1028446
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B007XCQAIE/ref=yo_ii_img?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Sucks, a bit, but it works enough to keep in a field tool kit. Get a set of tips for it though.

>>1028462
Have you removed that thin red/green-ish insulation layer from your wires? It's best to remove it with a lighter.

If you are working on phones, get yourself some chipquik and removal alloy. The removal alloy makes the removing of charge ports way easier, especially the ones that are flex cables surface soldered to the board, looking at you iPad Air.

>>1026715

We all know that lead based solder is better in almost every way, but the reason people don't use it is to be compliant (non lead based solder is safer)

>>1026369
I know this is a necro, but Woz literally holds the solder in his mouth as a third hand. Not that it's a good idea, just fascinating how much luck plays into whether or not you get the cancer

What iron do I actually need in terms of longevity and quality? Currently have an old Weller direct plug with no grounding pin, and I see everyone recommending really expensive stations.

>>1028953
>Woz literally holds the solder in his mouth as a third hand
>tfw I do the same all the time

>>1028953
He's not a production worker soldering all day every day. He would be very, very unlucky to get cancer from soldering.

>>1028953
lol thought i was only one dumb enough to do this. only done it twice

>>1028953
>>1028965
Metallic lead isn't well absorbed, I wouldn't suggest you put it in your mouth but it's unlikely to amount to any real absorption. I do it too. The /flux/ flumes are probably the most dangerous part of soldering to you (your iron isn't hot enough to vaporize any significant amount of lead).

Lead paint on the other hand, ingested, can react with stomach acid and consists of various lead salts and can be readily absorbed. Still neither has anything on organo-lead compounds (like those formerly used in petrol).

>>1028954
I have a Weller iron that is over 30 years old, it works and is fine (tip is due for a replacement again), but a soldering station with adjustable heat is just so much nicer to use. If you do enough soldering it's worth spending the extra 70USD.

>>1028954
>>1028954
>really expensive stations.
Mine is a ~50$ Hakko 936 clone. Maybe not the best station in the world, but way better than those junk cord irons.
The point of regulation is not really to hold a certain temperature, but to shorten the reheating time between soldering consecutive joints. The tip always looses some heat after working on a joint, so without regulation it's easier to make a cold joint if you're impatient. Also it's great when you have to solder bigger joints or elements that act effectively as heatsinks, because you can adjust the temperature accordingly to their size.

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>>1026369
>breath

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>>1026373
>Thick solder (anything greater than 0.8mm or so dia, ~0.5 or a bit less is ideal) is useless and should be avoided unless you are soldering something huge (like a heat sink).
I can quite comfortably solder 0.5mm pitch devices with 1mm diameter solder.

>>1026373
you don't solder a heatsink....

>>1028982
sometimes you do

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>>1028982
>being this clueless

>>1028978
Takes a bit more practice, but for a beginner smaller solder is easier, as you don't have to rely on it running in correctly as you can just place the tip where you want it.

How do I figure out/calculate the best temperature for soldering?

>>1029841
Read the label on your soder and it should tell you.

>>1029849
I mean for example soldering with lead-free on small copper wires

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Any tips on soldering multi wire cables? I had a hard time getting three nice splices to reconnect my audio cable. Splicing each wire became harder because there was less and less slack. Is there a trick or is it just hard?

>>1029882

just use common sense. after your first wire is joined, fold it away from the rest, which brings the remaining wires closer. repeat.

>>1028982
There is literally nothing wrong with soldering a heatsink. It is the best form of heat transfer that you will ever get, short of the heatsink being built into the IC.

>>1029855
Heat transfer at the tip can change immensely based on the tip used and your technique.
Just wing it. If your technique is correct and nothing's melting, either your technique is wrong anyway, or you need to pump up the heat.

>>1029886
Ok, I guess a set of helping hands would help with that too. Keeping the tension while trying to splice/solder was quite tricky.

I also found that when using heat shrink, it would shrink while I was heating the wires to apply solder. Is that just a matter of stripping enough of the outer insulation so that the heat shrink can be pushed far enough away that it doesn't heat up?

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>>1029897
>Is that just a matter of stripping enough of the outer insulation....

yeah, the obvious trick to keep heatshrink from shrinking is to move it away from the heated wire. there are these gadgets that you're supposed to clip onto the wire to keep the heat from moving into the insulated portion, but they're a pain to use.

hand soldering bgas for prototypes is easy with a toaster oven and a product like this:

http://www.solder.net/products/stencilquik/

also learn to love flux.

What uses do chisel/screw tip have compared to pen tip?

>>1029982
Pen tip
>better for large surface area work like >>1027141 does
>sucks for PCBs
Chisel tip
>more precise, lots of heat transfer in a smaller area

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Question. Can I bridge the connection between the capacitor and that relimate using a piece of insulated copper wire soldered onto the legs?

>>1029982
compared to a pointy conical tip, a chisel or bevel tip can retain a fat blob of solder so you can tin wires without needing a third hand to feed solder, and it has faster heat transfer into larger components and awkward shapes like solder cups.

>>1029992

sure, just find the start and end of that broken trace and jumper it with a wire. but it the trace burnt up from too much current, your board is likely dead.

>>1029992
yes, plenty of repairs are done that way
what lifted that trace? did it peel off on its own and you accidentally broke it or something?

Put the iron where you want to solder, and put the solder into the tip of the iron, not vice versa

>>1029997
I don't have a solder sucker to reset the cap so I was thinking about soldering some wire onto the posi leg and the other end to the posi leg of the relimate

>>1030022
It's a part of a hover board circuit board that my dealer acquired. He tried to fix it. Lost 8 screws doing so.

>>1029903
> heat sink

i always thought they were simple clips to hold a wire steady...

>>1026600

I'm very happy with my Hakko 888-D at ~$80 for through-hole stuff.

I'd save the serious dosh for a hot air rework station and/or a proper desoldering iron.

>>1026362

One thing I wish I knew about before I started building eurorack modules was the differences in the type of flux.

I started using the NO CLEAN flux which actually means you CAN'T clean it. I'm sure it has its use, but its terrible looking and you are stuck with it. I tried to clean it off as well using alcohol which left the boards cloudy and stripped. They work fine, but unappealing to look at in reflective light.

I switched to organic water soluble flux and clean my boards in the sink with a toothbrush. They come out looking super clean and professional!

I really wish I knew ahead of time.

>>1030209
I agree. But on the other hand, it means cleaning the boards is not optional.

>>1030209
>not potting everything in epoxy
>leaving your circuits visible
It's like you want the chinks to steal your design.

How horrible with my death be if I buy a chinese temp controlled soldering iron for like $30~40?

>>1030742
As long as you keep in mind that the temperature control is a gimmick, and not in any way representative of the actual temperature, why not?

>>1030742
Probably pretty boring, late in your life due to heart disease, in your sleep if you're lucky

>>1030963
I mean, the temp controls are just knobs, not digital.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/shitfucker/32607002829.html would love this if I could get it in a US variation

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/durka/32435706334.html
this is interesting as well.

Soldering stranded wire into solder cups will make you want to shoot yourself.

>>1031188
Tin it first.

I have never had a soldering iron of my own that would ever get hot enough to actually melt solder.

Am I doing something wrong? They'd get hot enough to melt or burn other stuff like plastic, but solder would never melt properly.

For reference, these were 20-ish dollar irons bought from Canadian Tire both times. One of them was some off-brand, the other was a Mastercraft. Both never got hot enough and outright broke after a few weeks. What gives?

Should I just get a pressurized lighter and use that or something?

>>1031246
Well, cheap soldering irons are generally always terrible, and the tips somehow seem to oxidize literally in the time it takes to warm them up.

Get like an Aoyue 936 off amazon and put a Hakko tip in it and you'll be good to go.

It seems expensive but really you'll wreck more components than you fix trying to use a torch.

Also: Look up the right way to clean and tin the tip.

>>1026362
Let the wire/contact point melt the solder, not the iron. Basically youre not heating the solder with the iron, youre heating the metal that then heats the solder.

>>1026362
remember, heat the target, not the solder!

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>remember, heat the target, not the solder!

but if the soldering iron wont even melt the solder just by itself, this advice is pretty useless. what the noob needs to do is watch youtube videos on preparing the tip by filing and tinning the tip. it's perfectly possible to solder with a $10 15-watt crappo soldering iron, but only if you get the tip in shape. of course, you wanna have some thin leaded solder with a flux core as well if you wanna get anywhere. but the most important thing is a shiny chome-color wet tip, not a cruddy black one like in the pic.