[flagged]
I hate soldering
151–160 of 244 posts
Re: I hate soldering
#152Soldering is something where bad tools do genuinely make it extremely hard to do a good job. I used my dad's old soldering iron for a while, where it just plugs into the wall and gets hot, with no other temperature control than (I assume) some kind of thermal switch to stop it melting. I always hated soldering with that thing, and my joints looked awful. Then I got a pinecil, and my experience changed completely. Sup…
I'm an electrical engineer (look in my bio if you want a shameless plug for my commercial OSHW project), can't go wrong with an Aifen A9E.
Honestly 90% as good as my genuine JBC CDB and only costs something like $65 USD.
Re: I hate soldering
#153I had to click, because it turns out that I love soldering. It's relaxing and has a skill curve such that there's a trick to it but with a bit of practice, you can be someone who is really good at soldering, too. For anyone reading, the key is to invest in a proper stereo microscope and a decent fume extractor. I recommend this one: https://www.strangeparts.com/a-boy-and-his-microscope-a-love... If you're up for a bi…
What about aluminum? I haven’t been able to find a welder willing to work on my custom bike frame, so I’m considering learning to do it myself after taking a welding course. The custom car builders on TV make it look easy, but aluminum seems like an incredibly difficult material to work with.
If you get a quality tig welder aluminum isn't too bad. It's definitely more difficult than steel but I taught myself to weld AL without too much trouble. Practice on some scrap for sure before your bike - it'll be easy to blow a hole in thin bike tube.
The biggest challenge I've had in welding aluminum as a hobbyist is that I rarely know what aluminum alloy I'm working with. Most things don't say what type so we're left guessing what filler is appropriate. If you use the wrong filler it could be prone to cracking again in the future.
Also for thicker aluminum preheating is very important. The aluminum transfers heat away very quickly so you get cold lumpy welds if you don't have both parts pretty hot at the start.
Re: I hate soldering
#154This is somewhat off topic, but a question to Americans: Why do none of you seem to pronounce the "l" in soldering? Every US video seems to say "soddering"
I always thought of it as analogous to the silent Ls in would/should/could, calf, half, chalk, caulk, and Polk.
Re: I hate soldering
#155I had to click, because it turns out that I love soldering. It's relaxing and has a skill curve such that there's a trick to it but with a bit of practice, you can be someone who is really good at soldering, too. For anyone reading, the key is to invest in a proper stereo microscope and a decent fume extractor. I recommend this one: https://www.strangeparts.com/a-boy-and-his-microscope-a-love... If you're up for a bi…
just don't use leaded solder. the absolute obsession of people from NA and lead should be studied.
There isn't much advantage to even learning on lead in my opinion, unless your only goal is to work on old stuff that used leaded solder.
Any modern or new stuff (i.e. the smallest components) has the whole supply chain designed around lead-free. Lead free boards, using lead free chips, which are meant to take the heating profiles for lead free solder. If working in industry, you'll need to learn lead free eventually, so you had better do it from the beginning.
I save my leaded solder for old radios and retrocomputing, but as I would rather not spread lead dust around my work area, I only ever use lead-free solder paste for modern work.
Leaded work is easier, a little, but not so much so that I wouldn't consider not learning lead-free.
Re: I hate soldering
#156I had to click, because it turns out that I love soldering. It's relaxing and has a skill curve such that there's a trick to it but with a bit of practice, you can be someone who is really good at soldering, too. For anyone reading, the key is to invest in a proper stereo microscope and a decent fume extractor. I recommend this one: https://www.strangeparts.com/a-boy-and-his-microscope-a-love... If you're up for a bi…
Starting with soldering, I find these 200$+ recommendations (regardless of which tool) hard to justify. # Soldering iron I'd recommend the Pinecil V2 with IronOS. https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS # Solder fume extraction I've built a simple fume extraction with an old plastic case, a 120mm fan and a sheet of carbon filter attached to a 120mm dryer / air conditioning hose. Around 15$ and good enough for soldering from…
A desoldering hand pump costs $5. Similiar shitty as a copper wig, works fine though.
Re: I hate soldering
#157He is right though with a shitty solder iron its just not fun.
My 50Euro hardware store solder iron was garbage. Bought one of these pencil type solders for 100 Euro years later and that small thing was 10x better than the heavey shitty hardware store solder iron.
I'm sure a good station makes it even nicer but if your normal iron doesn't get hot fast and doesn't keep it properly hot, you can play lots of guessing games why your stuff doesn't do what that person on youtube is showing you how it should work
Re: I hate soldering
#158For anyone thinking about learning to solder, there are several levels of what you can do with a soldering iron. The surface-mount stuff and ovens and microscopes, that's like level 3. Level 1 is just being able to take two wires and connect them, reliably and cleanly. That's already immensely useful and requires very little skill and equipment. $50 gets you a nice soldering pen, another $50 gets you some tweezers, s…
One of reasons I think people who don't have training in it struggle with soldering is Hollywood's depiction of it. You typically see the actor make a quick stabbing motion with the soldering iron, as if wielding a knife. The solder will already be held against the wire or PCB pad, and in comes the stab. It's almost as comically bad as Hollywood's depictions of computer 'hacking'.
Proper order of operations:
(1) soldering iron to metal first to heat up the wire / pad / pin
(2) apply solder at junction of soldering iron and wire / pad / pin
(3) remove solder
(4) remove iron
And the most important basic tip is to make sure you have the appropriate soldering iron tip for the job. Pointy tips intended for precision work don't provide enough heat transfer for soldering larger pads or wires.
Re: I hate soldering
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
How well does the pump work? A couple times I've had to desolder a connector or IC with lots of pins from a PCB and it's a painful process. I've always wanted to buy one of those, but I've seen lots of reports about getting clogged easily. I rarely desolder, but I can easily justify a hundred bucks if I can avoid all that hours of work, where I'm also risking damaging an IC, lifting a pad, or something else...
I've used a couple of the ZD- ones and they are ok, but not very good quality. They don't really clog all that often, but they do fill up quickly and are very difficult and messy to clean out. They are also made of cheap plastic which will crack after a while exposed to the heat that it is. The tips for them are also low quality, and the solder will eventually dissolve them, making the hole in the middle of the tip l…
That was true for the older ZD-* models. The one I mentioned is in a different Ballpark (except you also meant specifically the ZD-8965).
The hakko is way better quality but beneath the price (i have no idea where you got one Besides that the hakko is a good device. Too expensive for me though
Re: I hate soldering
#160I had to click, because it turns out that I love soldering. It's relaxing and has a skill curve such that there's a trick to it but with a bit of practice, you can be someone who is really good at soldering, too. For anyone reading, the key is to invest in a proper stereo microscope and a decent fume extractor. I recommend this one: https://www.strangeparts.com/a-boy-and-his-microscope-a-love... If you're up for a bi…
I, too, love soldering. I've done it since I was around 6 years old (wood burning before that). It's what I do when I want to zone out and relax. I've found random people at Burning Man and camping events who needed help with electronics, and I was happy to spend my time with an iron helping out - I even carry a butane-powered one on my motorcycle for quick repairs in the field.