Soldering tips and blunders - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: imidis
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2016, 09:57:23 pm
content: A recent experience I thought I would share and perhaps help others - or at least give a laugh.I purchased a hakko iron a few years ago after deciding to get back into soldering component replacement parts, mainly pc's and notebooks. Soldering stations don't note on the display whether it's in C or F, however, being versatile it didn't really matter - so I didn't bother changing it. This worked fine for me, I'm sure when I first got it due to the crappy fx-888 d ui that I messed up what cal there was in the past. But, basically, I took my trusty solder and got it to the mealting point and adjusted it up slightly to give me a base temp, so really. It didn't matter what it was reading as long as I knew where I was defaultly at.This worked fine, until.. I needed to do some smd rework so I purchased a yihua hot air/iron station which was conveniently set to C. Which was fine, I again didn't bother changing it.Going back to my hakko, I thought to myself, 450C is a bit hot, but I'm sure I wouldn't set it this high, so it must be F. So this worked fine and dandy until I decided to switch my hakko to C so I wouldn't get a bit concerned thinking F was C etc.That's where it went a little downhill.An LED was out on my keyboard so, I figured I'd just scrounge up a 3mm green LED, naturally easy fix right?Well, I took off the old LED and cleaned off the pads, (my error not getting the base solder melting point after factory reset and set to C) it was a bit hot and of course the pads disappeared, from being a bit too high a setting. Doh, at least it was just my keyboard. So, fixed that, that certainly became more annoying than it needed to be.So. now they are both happy and I know how they are set.So naturally, one of my tips is to take extra care when working with small pads, they are not as forgiving.I've noticed most mention that indeed you should heat up the whole solder joint but don't go into detail as to why. Solder follows heat when properly fluxed and flowing (it can even defy gravity in following). This is the reason you want to heat up the whole solder joint. It will flow nicely into all the heated areas.Any others to share?I find soldering quite enjoyable and even if it goes wrong, you can still fix it normally.

author: RobertHolcombe
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2016, 10:45:00 pm
content: This is still my go to video when teaching someone fundamentals of soldering - I've found the section towards the end on thermal coupling is usually the most helpful advice for beginners. The perception seems to be that if the tip is hot enough then solder will flow on anything it touches, regardless of how small the contact area is, or how dirty the tip is. Wetting action doesn't occur so they crank the temperature up which makes the situation worse, usually results in damaged boards, melted wire insulation, thermally damaged components, etc.

author: nanofrog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2016, 04:21:31 am
content: Another vote for watching those videos.Others too, such as those posted inthis threadwhich is currently active.