When you are flicking the welding rod through the molten pool of metal (stacking dimes), you will notice a "wetness" to the pool just in front of the stick,
That is the 'look' of what the solder should be doing, It only takes about 3-5 seconds of heat depending on component size, It will flow smoothly into and around the joint.
See if you can add some liquid flux to the joint, even if you use flux core solder, the additional flux will help with the 'flowing' of the solder.
Also when the solder flows and the joint looks right, I will finish the joint by sliding the iron up the leg of the component. seems to help in controlling the 'blob'.
if it wasn't 1am , id probably go round the corner to prime electronics I seem to be up late, had not such a good day or week, weak and tired , was in bed doing experiments but I brought it on myself by not taking thyroxin for weeks , and since I have no thyroid any longer I cant regulate my metabolism without it. I am a dummy..it will take days to fix !
Best things I have found
1. heat joint together then allow solder to flow evenly, don't jar while cooling or you will get crappy cold joint. (I like 63/37 Sn/Pb)
2. Clean and use flux
3. for heavy copper lands, consider preheating with an air tool to allow better soldering results
4. Use as small a gage of solder as you are comfortable with. I like 22ga for most work.
Whiteoxe, it's most likely those solder blobs are just sitting on the surface and not connecting anything.
More solder isn't better. Just use enough to fill the pad.
If the joint is nice and clean and your tip is tinned, when you touch BOTH the pad AND the lead with the iron, you should see the "glimmer" of flux flowing around the pad. Then just touch the solder to the OTHER side of the joint and you will see it melt and flow into the joint. Once the pad is filled pull the iron and solder away from the joint AT THE SAME TIME.
Do you have solder wick? You should redo all those joints BUT practice on some old PCB first so you don't kill your QuickStart.
Not bad soldering Duane. A tad too much solder on a few. Did you clean them all because I see what looks like residue on the far left pins.
Hakko makes a tip cleaner that looks like a mound of metal shavings. You would think that it would damage the tip but it's actually pretty good at removing some of the junk that gets on tips. Does anyone know what that black stuff that gets on tips is?
There is a solder-like tip cleaner that works good if the tip is only slightly dirty.
Do not, do not, do not ever use sandpaper on a tip. Tips have a thin protective coating so use solder or a tip cleaner.
I have a Weller Pyropen WSTA 6 and I am most satisfied with it. I really like not having the hassle of a cord and the push-button off feature.
It has adjustable temperature and heats up fairly fast at high setting and can be throttled back for delicate work. I like the smaller pointed tip especially since most my old irons were from a bygone era and tended either loosen delicate traces or bridge the tiny pins on things I work with these days.
I will repeat some of what others have said only because they are so important. Keep the tip clean and tinned. Soldering always goes smoother when both sides of a connection have been pre-tinned.
If at all possible solder from the non-component side of the board and do not 'dob' solder on a connection.
It is best to have both surfaces immobile for soldering. When mounting components bend the leads enough to hold them in place and place tip of the iron on the lead and the back of the circuit board.
I've got one of the solder tip cleaners that looks like a pile of brass/copper shavings in a little cup. It works great; I like it better than the sponge that I used to use. And you don't have to keep it wet!
@Genetic, I do mean to redo those blobs, though testing with multimeter tells me they are ok its still irking to know what it looks like. I will get some braid/wick to soak it up after ive done several good practise solders. I meant to buy some today but I lost track of time. They will be closing up just as I walk round the corner and I want to look at all the different irons etc, so ill do it in the morning.
Edit: ive been rewriting little red riding hood for a class. I read a politically correct version via google, The woodcutter coming to the rescue cut off Red Riding's head for putting the Wolf(a supposed endangered species) life in danger. It was very funny!
Whiteoxe, it took me 6 months to learn soldering when I took an Electronic Assembly class. I spent 3 months alone soldering resistors with the instructor always saying I did something wrong. In fact he would tell the class, if you need flux then your doing something wrong. It wasn't until later that I learned my hard-nosed instructor has taught me Mil-Spec (Military) soldering which is very strict.
Good soldering take techniques and knowledge. I can solder through-hole great but I was never taught surface-mount.
I forgot to mention that you should get a good solder sucker.
NASA has workmanship standards. Section 6 is about through hole soldering. I learned a lot from looking through the handbook.
NASA requires heat shrink tubing to be transparent. IMO, transparent heat shrink tubing is great. It's really nice to be able to see the joint after the tubing has been added.
I remember for wiring we couldn't nick the wire, burn the insulation, cover up the individual strands of wire with too much solder, or leave any soldering defects. If you made a mistake you needed o start over.
I can understand all the nitpicking because if it's doesn't look good then how do you know if it's any good.
For sure I have worked in places where you were not allowed to solder up or rework any production items without the right certificate of proficiency and to get that certificate took rather a lot of time and effort in training and testing.
None of the electronics engineers, who actually designed the stuff, were allowed to touch it as they did not have the papers.
So now, ask yourself? Do you want to be an amateur electronics engineer as a hobby or do you want to be a production line worker?
If the former you can learn to solder quite well enough in ten minutes given the right guidance. Polish your skill over time as you go along.
What type of company was that Heater?
I've worked in places where they were hardcore about certification and others where it wasn't as formal. In most of the places I've been at engineers rarely do soldering except if it's simple and they need it immediately. Usually they will have production do it for them or hand it to technicians. I solder every now and then whereas production might solder everyday. I know failed parts sometimes go to engineering for analysis or they just get sent back to the company that made them. Sometimes Engineering is very understanding and works well with production but in some companies they are very adversarial. I always try to be helpful to others so that they will more than happy to help me when I need it. Besides I am often in need of their expertise.
That was places like Marconi Radar where they were building military radars and missile guidance systems.
There was a lot of electronic design engineers, they did a lot of their own soldering (and wire wrapping) on prototypes and such, they also had people on hand to do that for them. But not on the production floor. I once spent a month or so in the test department, when finding problems with boards and such I could write up where the issue was and what components need replacing or errors fixing but I was not allowed to actually fix it.
Did the units just get repaired or were the problems corrected so they wouldn't happen again?
The defect rate was pretty small. For sure if the fault showed up too much the manufacturing process would be investigated. All this kind of stuff is very rigorously documented and traceable.
As for a particular actual faulty board or assembly if there were design errors that showed up or improvements to be made to it could be upgraded to a revised design. So called "mod strikes". Named after the fact that there were actually a series of numbers printed on boards and labels on assemblies that were struck out as modifications were made.
Actual faulty components on boards, IC's etc, was a big deal requiring tracing back to the component supplier or manufacturer.
Whiteoxe, it took me 6 months to learn soldering when I took an Electronic Assembly class. I spent 3 months alone soldering resistors with the instructor always saying I did something wrong. In fact he would tell the class, if you need flux then your doing something wrong. It wasn't until later that I learned my hard-nosed instructor has taught me Mil-Spec (Military) soldering which is very strict.
Good soldering take techniques and knowledge. I can solder through-hole great but I was never taught surface-mount.
I forgot to mention that you should get a good solder sucker.
Its not you .
It would be the bad PCBs .......
So many firms use old tin plated PCBs and not gold plated . Mil likes to use vac sealed PCBs so that the pads dont go stale . flux is just for oxides ........ if there are no oxides you really need allmost no flux .. ( its not black or white but a scale of relative oxides) but none of the less If you take a Kim wipe to your solder wire and component leads you have stripped some oxides . if you use new PCBs you have removed again more grime .... in the end the flux is only used for a few remaining stray parts per thousands of the hidden stuff.
Shoot I have never needed extra flux on a gold PCB .
Wets like a portland road in a rain storm.
My solder proff was in the navy . Yea we did our IPC cert to Mil spec too .
I have had a few nice stations and I I really LOVE the value of the hakko 888 ( D) or knob.
Ramps up fast . It has a nice price point of 70 -100 bucks ..
I have had mine in use for allmost 2 years now and I its going strong . And I mean it gets USED .
See I dont use solderless breadboards for most of my projecs . I dont nee them . I use the dirt cheap blank PCBs from frys and I make as I go circuit blocks that I then interface in to one project . a dremel and some time you can negate the need for a solderless BB. And I deal with RF and Power and stuff that REALLY does not belong on a solderless PCB as it can Really add some undisired stuff .
Soo I use My iron way more then most for home use .
The one thing to watch out for is RoHS and its issues . You can do it but its not fun . and frankly I feel every one neeeds to learn it so that It makes lead that more enjoyable
Well Ive been guilty of doing little but still following posts lately this thread has been making me feel Ive stepped through the secret cupboard into the land of the illuminate of electronic engineering I enjoyed that youtube video I think prof put up about Sinclair and acorn, I was reading about the Sinclair as a teenager when working on an uncles property, cutting down trees to make posts and getting my hands covered in blisters digging with crowbars and shovels to create new paddocks , praying lunch time would come before I fell down beaten. cursing I'd dropped out of school..... but looking back, some of the best years of my life Never got a Sinclair as I didn't think they were sold much in Australia...long time ago, not sure exactly what stopped me, maybe it was also the $3.oo an hour
I HATE RoHS!!!! Give me 63/37 anytime. Peter, sounds like your solder prof may have had the good fortune of going through 2M (micro-min repair) school. I would have seriously considered sticking around another 4 for that school in the Navy.......
For sure I have worked in places where you were not allowed to solder up or rework any production items without the right certificate of proficiency and to get that certificate took rather a lot of time and effort in training and testing.
None of the electronics engineers, who actually designed the stuff, were allowed to touch it as they did not have the papers.
So now, ask yourself? Do you want to be an amateur electronics engineer as a hobby or do you want to be a production line worker?
If the former you can learn to solder quite well enough in ten minutes given the right guidance. Polish your skill over time as you go along.
Been there done that. My first job after electronic school was a computer manufacturing plant. I started in the Unit Operational Test. We were not even allowed to move a wire wrap from one pin to another on a backplane or redo a bad crimp in a cable connector. There was not a single soldering iron on the whole test floor. Anything other than removing and replacing a circuit board had to be done by someone from the fabrication department. I had to work my way through Systems Test and then into Engineering as an Engineering Assistant before I got my hands on another soldering iron.
My next employer provided NASA certification level training. Back then it was expected that a competent technician would replace a bad component or do a field upgrade of circuit boards. The overarching rule of all the soldering I ever did was that if it did not look good it would not pass. There was always the possibility of one of my sites being subjected to a site audit where all my repair history would be examined for quality of work as well as completeness of documentation. This was doubly true of installations having to do with things military.
If you are going to solder then learn to make it look pretty, as slim as is functional and shiny bright.
the soldering is getting better and easier, though this photo could have been a bit clearer. Havent got a real macro lens just a standard and a zoom . wonder what Duane usedfor his close up, slr, webcam, phone cam ???
This is the first row I did minutes ago, my dirt cheap conical iron at first took around
3-4 seconds for the heat to transfer enough so I could solder holding the solder on the other side as shown to me in the videos.,
The iron started to get hotter and hotter very quickly so that I only had to hold it against thee pin and hole for one second before applying solder on the other side, each hole through solder got quicker and quicker and was actually burning the board I think by the last few solders even though i was very quick with the last few.
The next row after this photo I unplugged the solder let it cool down then finished off next 4 pins, no burning. But it isd a bit of a pain having to unplug the iron . I will continue practicing using the iron I have. I looked at the solders with a magnifying glass and they looked OK, I think they all took. No flux used. So much neater than my Quickstart soldering and so much easier. Just would prefer a chisel head not conical but for the moment I am going to make do. I am enjoying this now. but still will try to improve, Mil specs will never happen but I am far better and know more about the whole process and what to do.
That cheap iron may be dangerious , possibly could ruin a transistor if the heat is too high so ill have to watch that.
I was about 8 when I started to build xtal sets. My mate and I made our own soldering irons - a copper nail into the end of a piece of broom handle (they were all wood back then). Onto that wind a coil of fine varnished wire (extracted from an old radio coil). Connect each end to a big 1.5V telecom battery - they were easy to get then - about 2-3" dia and maybe 8" tall - dont know the capacity. Had a bar of solder and a jar of flux - possibly from my dads welding gear??? Used to burn out the wire often, but I had a big coil so plenty.
I taught all my kids to solder and they worked assembling electronics while still at school.
As a good start, grab an old computer board. Find someone with a gas torch and turn the components to the underside and heat the components till they fall off. Clean the board and chips with solder wick. Then resolder the chiips.This will give you plenty of experience for basically no cost.
Peter, the instructor taught us to only clean joints with alcohol and Chem-Wipes. The only time we were allowed to use flux was if we were tinning wires or soldering our final project which was a hand built PCB. I normally don't use flux but I see experienced assemblers use it all the time especially with SMT. One girl taught me that you can make a bad joint look better by putting a drop of flux on it and then heating it with the iron. She was very good with SMT parts and could pick them up and place them using the soldering iron tip.
Whiteoxe, looks a lot better. An old PC power supply is also good to practice on because the parts are bigger than you will find on a Motherboard. The pins you soldered on the left are dirty or burnt. What wattage is your iron because I have never had a problem with an uncontrolled iron being too hot. You might want to consider something like an Elenco solder station which is way better than some POS iron.
I have a Weller 30W iron (Professional Series) which is the same iron I learned soldering with and I have never experienced it being too hot.
I was given a Weller ECM-?002 soldering station that didn't work so I found their was continuity in the handle. I took it apart, cut out about 6" of the cable, and spliced everything back together and now it works great. The last time I looked a new Handle assembly was $175. The tips and Barrel are used on many other irons so they are widely available.
I have a FujiFilm FinePIx S1000fd. It's probably about five years old. For some reason it takes great macro shots. I've tried newer FujiFilm cameras and they don't work as well (for macro or video) than my older camera.
My sort of new Sony NEX-3N does a pretty good job with macro shots but not as good of a job as my older FujiFilm camera.
It's nice to see your soldering skills improving Mike. You'll eventually wonder why you ever thought it was hard.
Comments
That is the 'look' of what the solder should be doing, It only takes about 3-5 seconds of heat depending on component size, It will flow smoothly into and around the joint.
See if you can add some liquid flux to the joint, even if you use flux core solder, the additional flux will help with the 'flowing' of the solder.
Also when the solder flows and the joint looks right, I will finish the joint by sliding the iron up the leg of the component. seems to help in controlling the 'blob'.
1. heat joint together then allow solder to flow evenly, don't jar while cooling or you will get crappy cold joint. (I like 63/37 Sn/Pb)
2. Clean and use flux
3. for heavy copper lands, consider preheating with an air tool to allow better soldering results
4. Use as small a gage of solder as you are comfortable with. I like 22ga for most work.
More solder isn't better. Just use enough to fill the pad.
If the joint is nice and clean and your tip is tinned, when you touch BOTH the pad AND the lead with the iron, you should see the "glimmer" of flux flowing around the pad. Then just touch the solder to the OTHER side of the joint and you will see it melt and flow into the joint. Once the pad is filled pull the iron and solder away from the joint AT THE SAME TIME.
Do you have solder wick? You should redo all those joints BUT practice on some old PCB first so you don't kill your QuickStart.
Not bad soldering Duane. A tad too much solder on a few. Did you clean them all because I see what looks like residue on the far left pins.
Hakko makes a tip cleaner that looks like a mound of metal shavings. You would think that it would damage the tip but it's actually pretty good at removing some of the junk that gets on tips. Does anyone know what that black stuff that gets on tips is?
There is a solder-like tip cleaner that works good if the tip is only slightly dirty.
Do not, do not, do not ever use sandpaper on a tip. Tips have a thin protective coating so use solder or a tip cleaner.
It has adjustable temperature and heats up fairly fast at high setting and can be throttled back for delicate work. I like the smaller pointed tip especially since most my old irons were from a bygone era and tended either loosen delicate traces or bridge the tiny pins on things I work with these days.
I will repeat some of what others have said only because they are so important. Keep the tip clean and tinned. Soldering always goes smoother when both sides of a connection have been pre-tinned.
If at all possible solder from the non-component side of the board and do not 'dob' solder on a connection.
It is best to have both surfaces immobile for soldering. When mounting components bend the leads enough to hold them in place and place tip of the iron on the lead and the back of the circuit board.
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/156638-This-QuickStart-board-is-behaving-unusually?p=1281337#post1281337
I'll be doing some soldering prac today thx all.
Edit: ive been rewriting little red riding hood for a class. I read a politically correct version via google, The woodcutter coming to the rescue cut off Red Riding's head for putting the Wolf(a supposed endangered species) life in danger. It was very funny!
Good soldering take techniques and knowledge. I can solder through-hole great but I was never taught surface-mount.
I forgot to mention that you should get a good solder sucker.
NASA requires heat shrink tubing to be transparent. IMO, transparent heat shrink tubing is great. It's really nice to be able to see the joint after the tubing has been added.
I can understand all the nitpicking because if it's doesn't look good then how do you know if it's any good.
None of the electronics engineers, who actually designed the stuff, were allowed to touch it as they did not have the papers.
So now, ask yourself? Do you want to be an amateur electronics engineer as a hobby or do you want to be a production line worker?
If the former you can learn to solder quite well enough in ten minutes given the right guidance. Polish your skill over time as you go along.
I've worked in places where they were hardcore about certification and others where it wasn't as formal. In most of the places I've been at engineers rarely do soldering except if it's simple and they need it immediately. Usually they will have production do it for them or hand it to technicians. I solder every now and then whereas production might solder everyday. I know failed parts sometimes go to engineering for analysis or they just get sent back to the company that made them. Sometimes Engineering is very understanding and works well with production but in some companies they are very adversarial. I always try to be helpful to others so that they will more than happy to help me when I need it. Besides I am often in need of their expertise.
There was a lot of electronic design engineers, they did a lot of their own soldering (and wire wrapping) on prototypes and such, they also had people on hand to do that for them. But not on the production floor. I once spent a month or so in the test department, when finding problems with boards and such I could write up where the issue was and what components need replacing or errors fixing but I was not allowed to actually fix it.
As for a particular actual faulty board or assembly if there were design errors that showed up or improvements to be made to it could be upgraded to a revised design. So called "mod strikes". Named after the fact that there were actually a series of numbers printed on boards and labels on assemblies that were struck out as modifications were made.
Actual faulty components on boards, IC's etc, was a big deal requiring tracing back to the component supplier or manufacturer.
Whiteoxe, you've been quiet lately.
Its not you .
It would be the bad PCBs .......
So many firms use old tin plated PCBs and not gold plated . Mil likes to use vac sealed PCBs so that the pads dont go stale . flux is just for oxides ........ if there are no oxides you really need allmost no flux .. ( its not black or white but a scale of relative oxides) but none of the less If you take a Kim wipe to your solder wire and component leads you have stripped some oxides . if you use new PCBs you have removed again more grime .... in the end the flux is only used for a few remaining stray parts per thousands of the hidden stuff.
Shoot I have never needed extra flux on a gold PCB .
Wets like a portland road in a rain storm.
My solder proff was in the navy . Yea we did our IPC cert to Mil spec too .
I have had a few nice stations and I I really LOVE the value of the hakko 888 ( D) or knob.
Ramps up fast . It has a nice price point of 70 -100 bucks ..
I have had mine in use for allmost 2 years now and I its going strong . And I mean it gets USED .
See I dont use solderless breadboards for most of my projecs . I dont nee them . I use the dirt cheap blank PCBs from frys and I make as I go circuit blocks that I then interface in to one project . a dremel and some time you can negate the need for a solderless BB. And I deal with RF and Power and stuff that REALLY does not belong on a solderless PCB as it can Really add some undisired stuff .
Soo I use My iron way more then most for home use .
The one thing to watch out for is RoHS and its issues . You can do it but its not fun . and frankly I feel every one neeeds to learn it so that It makes lead that more enjoyable
Peter
Been there done that. My first job after electronic school was a computer manufacturing plant. I started in the Unit Operational Test. We were not even allowed to move a wire wrap from one pin to another on a backplane or redo a bad crimp in a cable connector. There was not a single soldering iron on the whole test floor. Anything other than removing and replacing a circuit board had to be done by someone from the fabrication department. I had to work my way through Systems Test and then into Engineering as an Engineering Assistant before I got my hands on another soldering iron.
My next employer provided NASA certification level training. Back then it was expected that a competent technician would replace a bad component or do a field upgrade of circuit boards. The overarching rule of all the soldering I ever did was that if it did not look good it would not pass. There was always the possibility of one of my sites being subjected to a site audit where all my repair history would be examined for quality of work as well as completeness of documentation. This was doubly true of installations having to do with things military.
If you are going to solder then learn to make it look pretty, as slim as is functional and shiny bright.
This is the first row I did minutes ago, my dirt cheap conical iron at first took around
The iron started to get hotter and hotter very quickly so that I only had to hold it against thee pin and hole for one second before applying solder on the other side, each hole through solder got quicker and quicker and was actually burning the board I think by the last few solders even though i was very quick with the last few.
The next row after this photo I unplugged the solder let it cool down then finished off next 4 pins, no burning. But it isd a bit of a pain having to unplug the iron . I will continue practicing using the iron I have. I looked at the solders with a magnifying glass and they looked OK, I think they all took. No flux used. So much neater than my Quickstart soldering and so much easier. Just would prefer a chisel head not conical but for the moment I am going to make do. I am enjoying this now. but still will try to improve, Mil specs will never happen but I am far better and know more about the whole process and what to do.
That cheap iron may be dangerious , possibly could ruin a transistor if the heat is too high so ill have to watch that.
I taught all my kids to solder and they worked assembling electronics while still at school.
As a good start, grab an old computer board. Find someone with a gas torch and turn the components to the underside and heat the components till they fall off. Clean the board and chips with solder wick. Then resolder the chiips.This will give you plenty of experience for basically no cost.
Sounds like the #6 Dry Cell. We used to use those for starting model airplane engines.
I took one apart once, the carbon rod was massive, I recall about an inch round.
C.W.
Whiteoxe, looks a lot better. An old PC power supply is also good to practice on because the parts are bigger than you will find on a Motherboard. The pins you soldered on the left are dirty or burnt. What wattage is your iron because I have never had a problem with an uncontrolled iron being too hot. You might want to consider something like an Elenco solder station which is way better than some POS iron.
I have a Weller 30W iron (Professional Series) which is the same iron I learned soldering with and I have never experienced it being too hot.
I was given a Weller ECM-?002 soldering station that didn't work so I found their was continuity in the handle. I took it apart, cut out about 6" of the cable, and spliced everything back together and now it works great. The last time I looked a new Handle assembly was $175. The tips and Barrel are used on many other irons so they are widely available.
That's a fantastic story. Thanks Cluso99.
I have a FujiFilm FinePIx S1000fd. It's probably about five years old. For some reason it takes great macro shots. I've tried newer FujiFilm cameras and they don't work as well (for macro or video) than my older camera.
My sort of new Sony NEX-3N does a pretty good job with macro shots but not as good of a job as my older FujiFilm camera.
It's nice to see your soldering skills improving Mike. You'll eventually wonder why you ever thought it was hard.