I have a very long and boring night ahead of me. Could anyone share their favorite online soldering tutorials and videos. Emphasis on flashlight related things like soldering a driver to pill. I don’t really know how to solder, although I have been watching vids. Soldering dissimilar materials like the driver to pill connection and a spring to a driver are things I would like to see. If you have a favorite I would like to see it.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/soldering-101.html
soldering takes practice but mainly for little components you need a small tip, the right temperature and solder size, a wet sponge, and heat the metal and touch the solder to the hot metal being soldered.
Find some videos, that is a big help. Here is the page where I got started:
A few things to help learing the art.
- don't overheat anything
- use quality solder
- use cleaned soldering iron tip and clean as needed through the process
- lead based solder melts more quickly
- do not melt solder on the soldering iron tip directly but use the preheated wire/leg/contact
- do it as quick as possible but make sure the solder did stick to what youre soldering
- if needed, clean througly anything you need to solder beforehand. Oxidation is the enemy.
Thanks for the links and tips. Kept me busy for a while
Budgeteer, what is wrong with melting solder to the tip first? I cut little 1-2mm sections of wire, touch my tip to them and there is a nice little ball at the tip that I then place on the component. It works well for precision and doesn't use excess solder on your component.
* Budgeteer, what is wrong with melting solder to the tip first? *
For novices is better not to do that as they tend to evaporate all the flux that way which is quite important if working with less than spectaculary cleaned metals (remember where all that stuff come from, and how long does it travel)...
Flux
In high-temperature metal joining processes (welding, brazing and soldering), the primary purpose of flux is to prevent oxidation of the base and filler materials. Tin-lead solder, for example, attaches very well to copper, but poorly to copper oxides (which form quickly at soldering temperatures). Flux is nearly inert at room temperature, yet becomes strongly reductive when heated. This helps remove oxidation from the metals to be joined, and inhibits oxidation of the base and filler materials. Secondarily, flux acts as a wetting agent in the soldering process,[5] reducing the surface tension of the molten solder and causing it to better wet out the parts to be joined.
I tend to do wires like you do but very quickly.
JamesEarlJones and Budgeteer gave some great advice. The only thing I'd add is to get a quality jar of flux and practice pre-fluxing components (I don't like or trust rosin-core solder). What I do is use a toothpick to put the flux exactly where I want the solder to flow, then with a bit of solder on the tip of the iron I touch the spot to be soldered and hold for a second or two to avoid a cold solder joint.
Edit: The explanation Budgeteer gave on why it's bad to pre-melt the solder to the tip is correct, if the only source of flux is the solder itself. Once the flux is cooked off, you'll just end up pushing a shiny silver ball around with the iron
.
I'm the same as you Match i always use flux and i also use Weller solder and find it very good quality, but never trust the flux core..
thanks for the tips guys! I found this video to be really good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_NU2ruzyc4&feature=player_embedded
It sounds like I need to get myself some flux :-)
I have spare flux but i hardly ever need it. Once you get used to proper soldering with quality solder you almost never need it if you have reasonably clean contacts. If you struggle at soldering and pretty sure that you're not doing anything wrong it is probably:
- soldering iron tip not clean enough
- quality of the solder is poor (don't buy cheap solder, a good brand don't cost much locally)
- Way to cheap soldering iron with a subpar tip
When i was still at school i occasionally forgot my solder at home so i borrowed some from the next guy beside me. We were making a school project (AC to DC variable output converter) and i had to solder the parts to finish it. Soon after trying his solder i realized what crap i was used to buy and why cold joints were so popular...
After that project i got best in class soldering award... Go figure... (6 years soldering experience vs none of my classmates but with wrong solder)
Sometimes i wonder where i would be now if i decided to go for chemistry instead of electronics. I would porobably end up in jail as i was very inclined toward heavy acids and explosives...
Still have my fun with chemistry occasionally. I'm just gratefull i learned enough of the basics to keep me safe from myself. :P