Saturday, October 2, 2010

How to solder

Stupid. My first post should have been this one. Well, its better later than never, so here it goes.

1. Wash your hands. It's really important, as your hands must be fat-free, or your components might get some of fat on them and the solder wont stick to them.
2. Clean your table. Make sure there's nothing that can make a static discharge.
3. Put a sheet of paper on the table. It really helps, as you can see small parts easier, and lighter background is better.
4. Lights up! Make sure that the area where you are soldering is light enough, or else it will be hard on your eyes.
5. Goggles, or at least eyeglass. Small quantities of flux sometimes jumps off your soldering iron, and it can hit you in the eye. On other areas it wont be dangerous, because when it reaches your face it isn't that hot, but on your eyes that can be pretty bad nonetheless.

6. NEVER TOUCH a hot soldering iron! The temperature of the tip can be more than 300 degrees Celsius, which can cause serious injuries.
7. ALWAYS put your soldering iron into it's stove. Don't leave it on table even for a second. It should be either in your arm when soldering, or in the stove at all other times. If you don't have a stove, go and buy one, its less than 2$, but can save you weeks of hospitality.
8. Make sure that hot soldering iron/stove has no contact with the cable. It can cause shock, and 240V isn't good for your health. Use of heat-resistant cable to avoid problems!

9. Preheat your soldering iron.
10. Clean the tip of the soldering iron with wet sponge, or even better with metal sponge.
11. Mount component that you want to solder into the holes, etc.
12. Work with that component until it is done, before moving to other parts. Rule of thumb: Big components are soldered first.
To solder correctly, first you must add the soldering iron to the component and the place where it will be, and heat those two items at the same time. After a few seconds, add some solder. Then, take solder back, and finally take soldering iron back.
13. Make sure that you solder it good:


14. Check solder places again. They should have a nice volcano shape, not a bubble, not a puddle. The solder should be shiny.
15. Don't be afraid of the fumes: its not lead fumes, it comes from flux. Lead evaporates in higher temperatures.

16. Clean the tip again
17. Start working on another component.
18. When you finish, clean the tip of the soldering iron, but leave a small layer of solder on it - this prevents oxidization, and the tip is preserver for longer time.

This should be it. If you have questions, there's comment field below ;)

27 comments:

  1. Hm i got to find some time to work through all of your posts. I might learn something

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  2. Good post! I've burned myself a few times on my soldering gun. If I could make a request could you do a post about grounding? I've always been confused by the concept when it comes to acutal circuits.

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  3. Thanks :) I actually needed to learn how to do this

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  4. Will do this week then (about grounding)

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  5. can't imagine when i am going to need this, but it is still interesting reading.

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  6. Great post!

    looking forward to reading the next one

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  7. Yea seriously... anyone with some common sense should not touch a hot soldering iron. You would think there'd be next to no injuries regarding that but...

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  8. Some younger folks might like to "check it if it is hot already" :) and touching it by accident happens more then you would expect :)

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  9. Too complicated. Just sand the pipe, flux it up, heat the pipe and apply the solder. Brush it in at the end, and bam you're done.

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  10. Thanks for the info, now I know where to come if I need info on soldering

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  11. This was a good idea for an article. I found it helpful and informative :)

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  12. back then I soldered everything I found with the solderer of the school, because teachers don't care^^

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  13. thanks this will come in handy

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  14. wow i soder erreday and didnt knw there was a dry soder... good work

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  15. Dude, seriously !! I LOVE THIS POST !! I had no idea how to do this and there has been lots of occasions I wanted to solder something. Sometimes for ''hacking'' my gaming console but also for repairing the cue button of my CDJ's !! Seriously, THANK YOU !!

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  16. That's some really good info, thanks!

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  17. This is a great post. I remember working with a friend to fix a TV we were soldering and our solder looked like the bad one. Could be a reason we couldn't fix it, then again it was a tiny cheap tv so no big deal.

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  18. I think you really need to tell your readers about the use of proper soder. Some low quality soder has a very low acid flux that makes the metal allow brittle.

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  19. I knew this :-) Soldering is boring though!

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  20. you've got some good insight in this post :)

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  21. You have no idea how much this helps me.

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  22. This is great info. Thanks, I can really use this.

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  23. a wet sponge is so helpful when soldering

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  24. now that i know how to solder
    the only thing i need is a solder XD

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  25. thanks this should come in handy, if only i would have found before attempting to mod my psp...

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  26. always found soldering tricky, thanks for the tips

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