81–90 of 163 posts
The biggest thing for me was just being brave enough to go for it and give it a try, and then learning how to undo your mistakes. Re-do things you’re not happy with with braid, reflow things with flux, etc. I’ve torn vias out of old valuable boards doing restoration, and I learned trace repair and fixed it.
This is true for most things. Don’t let the naysayers discourage you.
1. Use a soldering iron that can hit 400, and use a needle tip 2. Use leaded solder - lead-free is a pain. If you're not doing this for hours every day, even without ventilation, you'll be fine. 3. Heat the pads you're soldering to, not the solder. I used to tell kids to hold the iron to the pad for a count of three, then feed the solder in. 4. Two additional tools I find helpful - a solder sucker and copper wick.
Number three is basically the golden rule. From memory when I ran a production line with soldering stations ventilation is equally (and possibly more) important for lead free solder.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find watching videos of other people soldering is almost as good as practicing myself.
I get frustrated watching soldering videos online because there are a lot of videos online of people who are really bad at soldering.
While soldering is not that hard, different tasks require different tools. Most of them can be from very cheap to very expensive. As a beginner I'd recommend the following: A small USB-C soldering iron supported by IronOS[1], e.g. Pinecil vor TS100 A solid stand with brass wool A KU soldering tip (looks a bit like a knife) for good heat transfer, too small tips are not good Thin ( No clean flux (not a pen) Isopropyl…
Find some trash and practice removing parts and soldering them back on first. Not mentioned here yet but the majority of early soldering attempt failures mostly come from crap irons and crap solder not human issues. You need a decent quality temperature controlled iron and decent quality solder, preferably flux cored if you're doing repairs. Here, I have a second hand Metcal iron which cost less than the much recomme…
Only at the very end does your own soldering skill matter.
So the moment you find yourself fighting or forcing the solder, it’s better to step back and create the right conditions.
While soldering is not that hard, different tasks require different tools. Most of them can be from very cheap to very expensive. As a beginner I'd recommend the following: A small USB-C soldering iron supported by IronOS[1], e.g. Pinecil vor TS100 A solid stand with brass wool A KU soldering tip (looks a bit like a knife) for good heat transfer, too small tips are not good Thin ( No clean flux (not a pen) Isopropyl…