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I hate soldering

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Re: I hate soldering

#111

Post by seba_dos1 »

birdsongs wrote: post #44
HiPhish wrote: post #23

I love soldering, even though my skill ceiling is SMD components. There is something almost spiritual and humbling about soldering because you cannot force your will onto the solder, you have to listen to what the solder wants to do and work with it, not against it. When I first tried my hand at soldering I was using the "butter knife" method: apply solder to the iron, then try to smear it onto the wire like spreadin…

Flux, liberally applied, is the sudo of soldering. It lets you force your will and make the solder do what you want. No one ever uses enough. I always have either a pen with a felt tip, or a syringe of chip quik. It (a good proper flux) is what most people are missing when they struggle with SMD, the flux makes the solder almost magnetic and it jumps perfectly to the pad and the component. Mess up, make a bridge or b…

And don't ever think the flux core within the solder will be enough.

Re: I hate soldering

#112

Post by thearn4 »

I became significantly better at electronics soldering by learning to do glasswork (stain glass fixturing, etc). It wasn't intentional and it isn't even the same solder chemistry, but having to do broad asthetics on large pieces meant I "got it" better for the small scale electronics connections.

Re: I hate soldering

#113

Post by birdsongs »

Animats wrote: post #51
birdsongs wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use jlcpcb, they're common in the prototype and hobby domains. But there's quite a few board houses in taiwan and china that do this, definitely shop around. The annoying part is getting the bom and component placement files correct. I use kicad since it's free, and there's solid instructions from most houses on what they need.

JLBPCB does small runs cheap as a loss leader, so they get the production runs, if any, later. Also, they get to see what people are doing, in case something interesting goes by. There's also a suspicion that JLBPCB may be encouraged to do this by the Party, to discourage other countries from maintaining an independent prototyping capability.

Ah, really interesting points, thanks. It definitely seems too cheap to be true.

Re: I hate soldering

#114

Post by birdsongs »

fennecfoxy wrote: post #104
birdsongs wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flux, liberally applied, is the sudo of soldering. It lets you force your will and make the solder do what you want. No one ever uses enough. I always have either a pen with a felt tip, or a syringe of chip quik. It (a good proper flux) is what most people are missing when they struggle with SMD, the flux makes the solder almost magnetic and it jumps perfectly to the pad and the component. Mess up, make a bridge or b…

For sure. If you watch x device repair videos they tend to flood the general area with flux and it works to great effect.

I do the same. Flood and get the joints perfect, then clean with either IPA or a can of flux off.

Re: I hate soldering

#115

Post by poulpy123 »

Doxin wrote: post #72
Aurornis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything is lead-free Leaded solder is easier to work with for personal projects. Careful hand washing and handling is required, but it's easy. I also recommend people go to surface mount, but I don't recommend beginners immediately go for expensive microscopes and reflow ovens. Stick to 0806 components or larger to start and you can populate a board without any binocular microscope or magnification as long as yo…

> Leaded solder is easier to work with for personal projects it really isn't if you use a nice modern lead-free solder. you'll need your iron to be about 20c hotter, but it's not like the early days of lead-free where it'd flow all weird.

Do you have a brand recommendation ? Leaded solder is unavailable in my country

Re: I hate soldering

#116

Post by contingencies »

Anti-Schematic fantastic

Hacked the physical: pentastic!

Got the pump-wickin' stickin',

Who didn't turn off the bench?

Where's the 100x lens Gibson?

IC damage and bits of French

Master fine STM RPI ATM 329

Fuckin' A to the Zed

Fill your lungs with lead

Y'all shit's funded by

Venture rebrands for A&I.

Re: I hate soldering

#117

Post by throwup238 »

Doxin wrote: post #68
ssl-3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It heats to exactly the temperature I want in 3 seconds? Is there evidence to support this claim? (My bullshit detector is making some rather profound gurgling sounds.) edit: Seriously, my dudes. Links, or it never happened. Anecdotes are just anecdotes. Anecdotally, my soldering iron heats up very quickly as well and I'm very pleased with this, but I'm not making a claim that it heats to an exact, unspecified user-s…

I can make no claims as to the brands mentioned in the parent post, but a 3 second heating time isn't all that fast for a real nice soldering iron. Previous job had an iron that'd heat between you picking it up and moving it over to the PCB. That one was stupendously expensive from what I heard, but I can only imagine that tech has gotten a lot cheaper since then.

> Previous job had an iron that'd heat between you picking it up and moving it over to the PCB. That one was stupendously expensive from what I heard, but I can only imagine that tech has gotten a lot cheaper since then.

Metcal Fixed Temperature Induction soldering irons. Still the gold standard after decades because instead of using PID with a heating element and sensor, it exploits the curie effect. The tips are made of a special alloy that is only magnetic until a certain temperature after which it doesn’t absorb any more energy from the PSU, which just dumps a constant 25Mhz signal into the tip keeping it at the fixed temperature.

When their patents expired a couple of Metcal engineers left to found Thermaltronics, which makes the same soldering iron (they’re even tip compatible!) for 2-3x cheaper. They’re still more expensive than hobbyist soldering irons but well worth the cost for anyone doing a lot of soldering. The Metcal power supplies are beasts though so you can easily pick up a 20 year old unit for a couple hundred bucks on ebay and it’ll run till the apocalypse comes home to roost. I have an old unit made in the late 90s that is still going strong.

Re: I hate soldering

#118

Post by pipe2devnull »

_nxwj wrote: post #77
peteforde wrote: post #5

I 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 agree it seems like it could be fun. I think I am a bit paranoid about the hazardous chemicals and risk of a burns when using a traditional iron. From what I understand reading the comments, it's gotten much smoother with stencils, SMD, ovens, and so on.

It’s quite easy to not burn yourself. I’ve done a fair bit of soldering and it has only happened like twice to me and it wasn’t that bad

Re: I hate soldering

#119

Post by voxleone »

peteforde wrote: post #5

I 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.
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