I am looking to learn to solder electronics. In the past I have

>>1238678
soldering is easy.
solder melts at high temperature, everything needs to be hot.
soldering iron is hot.
apply soldering iron to area to be soldered
apply solder to area to be soldered, try not to touch the iron with the solder.
if component is hot enough the solder will melt and flow to make the joint.
feed in solder as required, remove solder, remove iron.

get some stripboard/protoboard, like pcb but straight tracks on the back, usually orange, some jellybean parts like resistors, capacitors, costs around 0.01$ for 100 of them, an iron and some flux core solder and practice practice practice practice practice!!!!!
if you aren't retarded you will pick up the principle in about 4-6 minutes. then you can go and buy a kit to build that does something useless like an egg timer or cylon eye light.

>>1238678

I'm not aware of a single resource which I could point you towards. However, from what you list your end goal aims as, I'd suggest browsing YouTube for a few tutorials/examples of reworking PCBs as a guide. EEVBlog has a multi part tutorial, other good channels are John Gammel and for watching someone doing real world applications, watch Louis Rossmann.

The advice from >>1238681 is okay for the very basics of soldering, but won't do for much else. As a starting point, get yourself a good quality, variable temp iron which supports a variety of tips. Buy some leaded solder and flux. If you do not have flux your job will be much harder, especially when soldering big integrated circuits. Do not get flux for pipes, you need proper electronics flux which comes as a gel, or in a pen.

Watch the above vids and taht should be more than enough to get you started on soldering - some of those channels get on my nerves a bit with their style, but if you can get through them it will be worth your time.

>>1238681
>try not to touch the iron with the solder.

so the soldering iron never actually touches solder? My crap-assed iron cannot heat the part if it does not have some liquid solder on it to help heat transfer. I really need to get a proper iron...

>>1238717
no. its important when starting out to solder the component instead of the iron.
in reality yes, you want a tinned tip at all times, not just for better thermals but to protect it too.
for speed you will end up tickling the iron with the solder and dragging it across the component rather than waiting for the whole thing to hit critical temperature.

>>1238678
Practice, practice, practice. It is more motor skills and "feel" than youtube learning. You can do a really shitty job and still have working circuits, they just won't last. Get the basics and then put in some hours.

Get some cheap equipment and learn how to strip components off garbage without burning them and buy some copper perfboard and practice putting them back on. Start big, then get smaller and smaller.

Helping hands are very useful for everything. Get a good set.

http://hackerspaces.org/
https://www.makerspaces.com/

Most hacker/maker spaces offer free soldering classes and have great equipment.

Thanks for the help so far. Do I really need flux? That is maybe why I have failed before.

Also let us say I make a mistake, I have both the little vacuum thing that you press the button and it sucks the solder off the board and copper based wick but in the past it never removed the solder completely. What do you guys recommend for that?

>>1238681
1 cent for 100? Where do you parts from?

File: IMG_20170904_214629.jpg (927KB, 1283x955px) Image search: [Google]

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>>1238906
Not the other anons, but yes you really need flux. Really really. It guides the molten solder to make a good connection.
Regarding solder sucker and desoldering wick, use solder sucker first followed by wick. The wick is really just a flux-impregnated copper braid. Move to fresh wick as needed. Any excess flux can be cleaned up with an alcohol wipe on the board. Speaking of boards, especially with small work, you'll want to be careful that the board doesn't get too hot; it can scorch, and lift a trace (fixable, but way more involved). Pic related is my smallest repair, eeprom in a tv.

>>1238950
Ok. From what I have seen so far the flux is just applied all over multiple contacts even if they are like the 4 contacts on the side of chip that you circled. When applying he to lets say one of the contacts lets say #1, how does the solder not flow to contact #2? Is the flux only attracted to the one with the most heat on it?

>>1238678
You cant learn with guides.

Go and solder something and youll learn just fine

The golden standard of soldering vids:

PACE videos.

NASA soldering videos.

For small parts, High Pitched Dave have some good SMD soldering vids.

File: IMG_20170903_133600_hdr.jpg (1MB, 4150x2334px) Image search: [Google]

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Can someone rate my soldering attempts (around the black pins)
I had 5min of practice de-/ soldering 3 LEDs from a cheap flashlight before soldering new switches into my kinda expensive keyboard. The solder joints had some small black spots in them, don't know if it's dirt or something else.

>>1239203

Looks nice to me.

>>1239203
Looks nice but why is there ripples, is it just the camera, if it is on the solder then it's no good

>>1239207
Thank you
>>1239210
I can't really tell, looked good irl but the "HDR" option on my phones camera is a bit wonky. In case there are ripples on the solder, how do I proceed to improve?

>>1239233
A lot of people talk a lot of shit about soldering.
If its a cold joint you will know by looking at it. If the solder has wetted to both the pad and the component in one go then its fine. If there is a gap, or a crack, or you can wiggle the lead around then its shit.
If it looks bad, like very asymmetric or not covering the whole pad or lead is at a huge angle or solder blob is too big, but its connected then it will work but people will talk about you behind your back.

Joint looks good, amount of solder looks good, leads look ok but some on that board might benefit a little trim.

Real test is does it work. If you want to check it get the old multimeter out and impedance test, should be nothing but realistically less than 1, 0.5 ohm maybe?

>>1238915
Not him, but probably aliexpress. You can get several hundred resistors for $1.
>>1239011
Flux doesn't do anything with the solder as such, it cleans the surface for solder to stick to. If there is no surface for the solder to stick to (like the area between two pads), solder won't go there. And yes, heat, the other pad is probably not hot enough, but even if it were, you'd need to put a whole lot of solder on the board for it to overflow.

>>1238915
>>1239350

100 for $0.01 is impossible.

>>1238717
I was taught to get solder on the tip before you start so it stays hot

>>1238950
Flux becomes is a risk with small and sensitive components. I don't use additional flux for SOT363's and under because they can get underneath the chip and short the opposing legs. Those are about the size of C44 on tthe board, but with 6 legs.

>>1240147
100pcs for $0.56
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1LOT-100PCS-Metal-Film-Axial-Resistors-470Kohm-4703-1-1-4W-470000ohm-0-25W-metalfilm-resistor/32528251389.html
300pcs for $1.50
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1-Pack-300Pcs-10-1M-Ohm-1-4w-Resistance-1-Metal-Film-Resistor-Resistance-Assortment-Kit/32799429233.html

He presumably meant $0.01 each, though it's 0.005 each. Even in massive bulk you can only get down to around 0.003-ish, SMD resistors 0.0015 or so.

>>1240209
you were taught wrong