How To Get Started In Soldering • Hacker News Board

Re: How To Get Started In Soldering

#111

Post by buescher » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

CarVac wrote: post #21

sb618 wrote: post #10

Aaah, this is really not a good beginner's guide to soldering! Cranking up to max temperature might work a lot of the time but runs the risk of frying ICs and causing PCB traces to come off. Also using a wet sponge can cause the tips to rust. It's much better to clean them with a brass "sponge" leaving the tip tinned to protect it. Finally the real key to easy soldering is solder flux (and leaded solder if you're all…

A wet sponge doesn't cause rust, it's occasionally blamed for cracking plating when you use a high temperature. If you use a moderate temperature (650°F/340°C) it's a gentler way to clean flux residue off the tip. Brass wool I reserve for scrubbing oxidation off the tip, but this eventually wears through the plating so I don't do this often. Leaded solder is both toxic and completely unnecessary for hobbyist use. I l…

Sponges - if you have a decent iron, you should be using a clean, damp-not-wet, sulfur-free, cellulose sponge. This means: buy the type sold for use with a soldering iron, squeeze the water out of it after wetting it, and switch to a fresh one when it gets cruddy. I have never had an issue.

Flux - hobbyists either try to use 50-year-old parts with totally oxidized plating and no flux, or they use too much flux. New parts should not need more flux than you have in your flux-core solder or in your paste.

The next thing that happens after people discover flux is that they want to clean it off, and 99% of the time, hobbyists should not be cleaning flux. If you cannot measure the reason for cleaning your board, leave it alone. The manufacturers will tell you that modern RA and RMA type fluxes do not require cleaning for "most applications" - and "most applications" almost certainly means you.

No-clean flux should be called "never-clean" for the reason you outline. You shouldn't try to clean it, and it will never get as clean as you'd like if you do. I like no-clean for stuff I'm going to show to other people. You will almost certainly use no-clean in production if you go to production.

Water-clean is lovely stuff but it's very unforgiving. It will corrode if not cleaned, and you have to plan to wash your board by using sealed parts or adding water-sensitive parts afterward. You have to be careful with tip temperature too or it will destroy your tips. I have a spool of 63/37 water-clean I've used maybe twice - the boards sparkled but it was just too much trouble.

Re: How To Get Started In Soldering

#112

Post by agumonkey » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 5:12 PM UTC

smiley1437 wrote: post #7

Pace's videos on youtube are old timey but charming and useful for basic soldering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIT4ra6Mo0s

By far my favorite. I'd pay even if they were given to me for free.

Re: How To Get Started In Soldering

#113

Post by agumonkey » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #24

> just be careful not to overspend on your first iron. I first learned how to solder on an ultra-cheap hardware-store unit, and you should, too I beg to differ. I used to suck at soldering, and while I'm still no expert, swapping my €20 basic soldering iron for a serious Weller unit (starting at €150) changed everything. The Weller heats up almost instantly, goes up as high as you want, and stays at a constant temper…

Yes, "too cheap" is bad for newbies. You need something at least average or you'll struggle progressing.

Same thing happened when I learned bass. I was unable to achieve anything after 2 years on a shovel. I then tried a squier special edition.. suddenly everything was getting out. Still a newb but the tool gave me direction on where to work to improve with a lot less effort. I was shocked.

Re: How To Get Started In Soldering

#114

Post by agumonkey » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

Soldering taught me how physical engineering and chemistry were oh so subtle. And how even simple circuits we rely on daily are kinda work of art.

Re: How To Get Started In Soldering

#115

Post by sureglymop » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 5:19 PM UTC

Thank you, this is great! On another note, what to solder? I've been playing around with arduinos and esp 32s but so far I've just used breadboards and didn't have to solder. Any recommendations for an easy project to take on?

Re: How To Get Started In Soldering

#116

Post by sidfthec » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #108

leviathant wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to the chorus - I spent $100 on a Hakko in my 30s and upon using it, immediately felt a sizable pang of regret at how much time I'd wasted with my $20 iron over the years. It felt like I must have been doing something wrong, but as soon as I had a decent iron, it's like all the videos I'd watched suddenly made sense.

Yep, ditto, except my realization came from a JBC encounter at work. I had to learn this meta lesson several times the hard way, because media portrayals lie and I had nobody to tell me different. Learn Good Tools -> Learn Bad Tools is easy Learn Bad Tools -> Learn Good Tools is hard. Learning has nonlinear difficulty in the number of variables and bad tools introduce distraction variables. Unless you literally can't…

As always, it depends. If I bought the best (or even pretty good) model tool for every hobby I start, I'd be broke. Not every tool needs to be the best.

Re: How To Get Started In Soldering

#117

Post by sbolt » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

atahanacar wrote: post #45

I used to "suck" at soldering, until one day I was recommended a Louis Rossmann video by Youtube and decided to watch it. Once I saw how much flux he used, I started to use more flux and as it turns out, that was my problem. That is my problem with this article. Flux is only superficially in a sentence. So my tip to beginners: Cleaning flux is way easier than struggling to solder with little/no flux.

Do you have a link to the video by any chance?

Re: How To Get Started In Soldering

#118

Post by jrib » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

eschneider wrote: post #65

As a strictly software person who's been living in the embedded world for a while, developing adequate soldering skills will make your life hella easier. Lots of setup/debugging problems get easier if you can just make the connectors you need or stick a lead in just the right spot. Being self-reliant for stuff like that is basic productivity stuff.

any good resources you recommend to someone who is a software person not living in embedded world?

Re: How To Get Started In Soldering

#119

Post by dang » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

was_a_dev wrote: post #6

> Much like the ability to drive a car with a manual transmission, read a map, or write a check, Gen Z is learning less and less about how to work with their hands—and it’s time for that to change. Ugh. Let's talk down the youngest generation of adults to justify a basic tutorial article. Ironically no one of Gen Z, that I know of, is unable to do any of those examples.

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: How To Get Started In Soldering

#120

Post by aequitas » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

If you ever get the chance, solder under a (say 40x) stereo microscope. The soldering station at my internship was this kind of setup and it literally gave me a whole new perspective on soldering. I got to see exactly how the flux and solder flow, how the heat spreads through the material and at what moment the heat was too high that it would melt or release the tiniest coper traces on the board. Also how well solder sticks and flows once everything is properly heated.