Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

instructables.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 200 posts

Re: Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

#141

Post by exmadscientist »

Ao7bei3s wrote: post #28
exmadscientist wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you shouldn't lap join wires to surface-mount pads. But sometimes you have to. Just don't deliberately design something this way and we'll call it good. (Through holes are fine. Mostly.)

Yes, but if you do have to design a PCB for soldering wires to pads, you can increase the strength of the pad by making the pad much larger in the copper layer. You can still keep it the original smaller size in the solder resist layer; keeping the soldering area away from the pad edge and fragile traces there increases the strength further, and gives it a tidy look and a nice soldering experience. For quick one offs…

Nope. Do it that way and your pad still rips off.

You need to nail the pad down with a few vias (under soldermask is fine) or use a through hole. Please just use a through hole if you can. They're a lot more reliable than just about anything else. Even SMT connectors rip off boards without much trouble. (This is my job. I have seen some things.)

Re: Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

#143

Post by Steltek »

picture wrote: post #97
squarefoot wrote: post #88

Bad advice. Just use a good solder iron, thin solder (possibly leaded), and good no clean flux, then lots of practice. It's all about timing: too quick = cold solder joint; too slow = burned pad/track, or part. Learn also to understand about thermal mass and how to change the temperature and timings according to what you're soldering and its size. Also, that iron looks like a Hakko "936" cheap clone: they are barely…

The PineCil looks like a TS100 clone, though I'm not too sure which came first. The huge benefit of these microcontroller irons are their monolithic heating element that integrates the temperature sensor. This allows for much better temperature control compared to cheap Hakko-style irons where the tip is a metal piece that sleeves over the heating and sensing elements. It makes a very meaningful improvement in terms…

IMO, the killer feature of the Pinecil is that it takes both direct DC power input (like a TS100) and USB-C (like TS80). It's a great versatile little iron. While I have both a Hakko and Weller, I often reach for the Pinecil because it just feels fun to use.

Re: Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

#144

Post by exmadscientist »

buescher wrote: post #120
gw99 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should even really do that. There are loads of nice solder in crimp terminations now that you can use for wires. Or wire to board connectors. Just stay away from any Molex crap. Tends to charcoal itself.

There are some really cool surface mount IDC things too, and push-in terminators for solid wire. Solid wire through holes is OK if the wire is never going to flex. Otherwise the stranded wire lapped to surface mount pads, or soldered into through holes, with a big blob of hot glue or epoxy for maybe-sorta "strain relief" is a great pet peeve of mine - it's ugly and it breaks. Never had a problem with Molex, myself.

Molex is great if you get the reflow-compatible models. Their older lines with the non-updated parts do have some issues at high temperatures. If you really care, look for glow wire tested parts. Or just, y'know, keep your iron away from them and buy spares for when you don't....

Re: Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

#145

Post by linkdink »

rkagerer wrote: post #140
mdturnerphys wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the one I've used: https://www.laserwiresolutions.com/product/mercury-4/

Awesome. How do they know when to "stop"? EDIT - found the answer: > Because the metallic conductor is essentially a mirror at the wavelength of the laser, the process is effectively “self terminating”, that is the laser vaporises all of the insulating material down to the conductor and then stops, so no process control is required to prevent damage to the conductor.

> The Mercury-4 is the culmination of years of research

I'm imagining some researcher after years of investment and experimentation eventually accidentally discovering the solution: "you mean it just shuts _itself_ off?!?!".

Re: Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

#146

Post by mdturnerphys »

rkagerer wrote: post #140
mdturnerphys wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the one I've used: https://www.laserwiresolutions.com/product/mercury-4/

Awesome. How do they know when to "stop"? EDIT - found the answer: > Because the metallic conductor is essentially a mirror at the wavelength of the laser, the process is effectively “self terminating”, that is the laser vaporises all of the insulating material down to the conductor and then stops, so no process control is required to prevent damage to the conductor.

This and the wire is able to conduct the heat away faster than it is deposited into it. With some very thin phosphor bronze wires I have seen damage.

Re: Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

#147

Post by exmadscientist »

linkdink wrote: post #145
rkagerer wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome. How do they know when to "stop"? EDIT - found the answer: > Because the metallic conductor is essentially a mirror at the wavelength of the laser, the process is effectively “self terminating”, that is the laser vaporises all of the insulating material down to the conductor and then stops, so no process control is required to prevent damage to the conductor.

> The Mercury-4 is the culmination of years of research I'm imagining some researcher after years of investment and experimentation eventually accidentally discovering the solution: "you mean it just shuts _itself_ off?!?!".

It doesn't shut itself off. It just stops cutting. It's like using concrete as a kitchen cutting board: that knife isn't going to do any damage, regardless of whether or not you stop pushing.

If you want to laser through metals, you need a different type of laser. Just as getting through concrete needs a different tool (say, a hammer chisel).

Re: Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

#148

Post by exmadscientist »

randombits0 wrote: post #115
gw99 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it’s additional flux that you don’t need.

Depends. New work versus rework versus what-is-this-piece-of-crap?

Ding ding ding. Production soldering isn't easy, but it's much easier to dial in than rework jobs. It's definitely a desirable goal to not need flux for production work.

Rework... good bloody luck.

Re: Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

#149

Post by fasthands9 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #127
duped wrote: post #16

This looks like a recipe for cold solder joints and solder bridges and doesn't seem like it saves time. What you really want to do when you have dozens of jumper wires is to do an array-of-struct to struct-of-array transform on the steps. Instead of cutting, stripping, tinning, and soldering one wire at a time, cut all your wires, then strip them all, then tin them all, then solder them one by one. Here's a pro tip:…

Another pro tip, get a better soldering iron than the one in the video. Soldering stations aren't cheap (Hakko is my somewhat-budget-friendly favorite) but that (plus good solder) will make you realize you've been able to solder all along: it's just that you were using crappy tools.

What's your tip for what makes one good?

I dont do a ton but for me it always seemed like the weak point was the grip was 3+ inches from the tip. If I am soldering something that is just a couple mm from the hole next to it then this requires a decemt amount of dexterity - even if things are held nicely.

Re: Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

#150

Post by bsder »

linker3000 wrote: post #101
gw99 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did several years in production engineering. We never used flux. Not once. It’s a crutch for people who don’t know how to solder. What we did was use solder that wasn’t shitty. Big fan of felder 62/36/2 but it ain’t cheap. We also cleaned stuff properly before soldering it. The reason people tend to flux things to death is that they didn’t clean the oxide layer off before soldering. Or used shitty solder.

"It’s a crutch for people who don’t know how to solder." This needs shouting from the rooftops. So many people get sucked into the groupthink on this; yes it helps with less-than-perfect beginner's soldering skills, but it should not be normalized. Flooding every joint with extra flux is unnecessary and a waste of money. /Pet peeve (well, one of them!)

Sorry, I'll fight you very strongly on this.

Most soldering that relies on effects from solder surface tension simply will not work without quite a bit more flux than you can get from the core of a solder wire. Drag soldering, for example, won't work on quad flat pack chips without quite a bit of flux.

And while my techs will absolutely back you up that my soldering skill sucks, to a person they ALL use solder flux for their soldering. Not even a single exception. And they're all trained to NASA aerospace standards.

Now, maybe you can be more skilled than they are and get away without using solder; however, back down here in reality, the rest of us punters will just add flux when soldering stuff, thanks.

Post reply on HN