I’m going to try a SRK resistor mod. Comfychair was showing me how to solder a rod to the back of the driver to pull it out here: A better SRK for me? in post #11.
I got this 40W soldering iron at Menards for $12.99 Wall Lenk Soldering Iron and I found a very old Radio Shack 8oz spool of 60/40 rosin .062 solder laying around of unknown origins. Will that work? Is .062 too large for little wires and resistors and stuff? I suppose if I figure out how to solder I should get some de-soldering braid or a sucker or something like that. I’m old and crazy so I doubt solder fumes, paint chips, and all that will hurt me much, or at least won’t make any difference.
I read about soldering and it says I should heat up the wire/rod I’m using to pull the driver, and the driver plate hot enough to melt the solder? That won’t cook it?
A 40-watt Radio Shack soldering iron that’s at least 20 years old.
A 60-watt soldering iron maybe 5-10 years old. Forget where I got it… maybe Fry’s.
A 6-watt battery powered soldering iron with a very fine tip.
For soldering the resisters with the zener diode resistor mod I used my 6-watt battery powered iron. It’s very fine tip worked great. For most general soldering and for heating the ground tabs to remove 7135 chips for Comfychair’s FET mod I prefer my 40-watt iron for the extra heat.
I rarely use the 60-watt iron… it’s heavier and the handle is further back making it harder to precisely control. It’s tip also gets coated with garbage a lot faster forcing me to re-tin it much more often.
None of my irons allow me to solder to aluminum pills. Not sure if I just need to get a spade tip for the 60-watt or instead get a heavier duty iron with spade tip, plus special solder and flux.
Firelight2, You didn’t tell me what size of solder works good for what? I’ve got globbing solder on the ends of 18650’s with a solder gun and some giant solder mastered. But for real soldering I’m a noob.
I have an old reel of 63/37 solder that I’ve been using for over 20 years. Still hasn’t run out, but it’s getting closer. I got a new reel of 60/40 to replace it.
Solder diameter doesn’t seem to matter because it melts anyways. So with thicker solder you just use a shorter piece.
If you plan to do reflow soldering I suggest also getting some low temperature solder paste. It’s helpful if you want to do things like reflowing emitters onto different stars.
For removing solder I have one of those spring loaded vacuum pumps (doesn’t work very well) and a roll of copper solder braid (works great). The solder braid is also handy for soldering to tailcap springs to reduce resistance.
I’ll echo the vacuum pump deal. It doesn’t work great with 63/37 because of the solder’s properties. I used mine a few times to clean a contact board. It usually takes multiple attempts to get it all when it would have just taken a few seconds with braid. I would assume with 60/40 it would work better?
I thought reflow was using the solder already on a pulled part to glom it back onto something else. Rather than ask a dumb question about it, I asked my Brother Google. He showed me WikiHow. OMG, There are videos there about every type of soldering. http://www.howcast.com/guides/930-How-to-Solder When did they invent solder paste? I took electronics at Elkin’s Institute in Tulsa, OK in about ’78 but sucked at soldering. That’s the last time I soldered…LOL Are there any other newfangled things I haven’t heard of? Since you young whippersnappers are cheating at soldering, how conductive is JB Weld?
A very old little soldering iron works fine for me. I used my propane torch successfully to re-flow an led to a star (except I got it backward). I have a big iron that can be heated by the torch, set for larger flame, but I have never used it.
Reflow or rework hot air station is absolutely GODSEND for surface mount components…just turn on the heat, aim it at the solder paste you put on the pad, after a few seconds the solder melts and the component pretty much self aligns and jumps on the pad…done
Removing is just as easy (you do need some needle tip tweezers)
If I can whip out a TexasPyro 20mm Nanjg 105C equivalent in 20 minutes flat…ANYONE can solder/desolder with a hot air rework station
Oh…to do a simple resistor bridge…any simple solder iron will do, just get a piece of stranded copper from any wire, apply some solder flux to the resistor pad…put a small dab of solder on the iron, touch it to the end of the resistor, then lay the wire across touch other side, done, clip off excess and you have jumpered the resistor (doesn’t have to be pretty but functional (it’s on the back side of the driver)
My first SRK I modded that way…got MUCH brighter but since I got a cheapo clone spinoff it didn’t have a heatsink thus it got MUCH hotter too! (I think once I get a driver up and running clean…I might end up doing the JBWeld massive heatsink trick to it (aka fill the space behind where aluminum would be with some mixed JBWeld…it’s not the best heatsink material, but it adds more mass to heat and allows more surface area contact with the head metal to wick the heat away.
Helping hands, something to stabilize your work and magnify your field of view is very helpful. Something like this from Amazoninstructables.com shows how to make some as well with 12 guage wire.