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How To Solder

aaroncake.net — Nice tutorial for DIY-ers or noobs on the proper techniques of soldering.

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digitalgopher 2 years 88 days ago, made popular 2 years 87 days ago

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pmcall221, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I wish I had this. My trial and error method I learned with years ago destroyed a lot of chips.
- kazsymonds, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Heat-solder-solder-heat, i remember my first time well, and i remember finding out how hot a soldering iron is!
- aplardi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah. I could have used this last week when i soldered a battery into my iPod Nano. Man those things are tiny!
  
  Good find, thanks a lot, digg!
Moses, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I actually have to go to training for this at work. It's so exciting...

Can't wait until I get to try soldering the tiny little SMT components with a scope.
- AntiMe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I do my SMT soldering in a toaster oven, so much simpler. Of course for patchwork it won't work, but it's really easy for initial board layout.
- tcrawford, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Dude; rework blows, lol, tell your machine operators to get it right! lol...ahh, the world of manufacturing...I'm a Kitter btw - aka Material handler!
- stuffhappens, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Actually, the tutorial is WAY WRONG on several counts:
  
  1) You are supposed to crop the leads to length BEFORE soldering them otherwise you leave an untinned, open cut end (of copper) which will oxidize and possibly corrode the joint. When you crop the lead first, the solder flows over the cut end and seals it. Also, the sealed joint is then rounded and smooth (provided your soldering is OK) rather than cut at an oblique angle - these 'sharp' cuts act as mini antennae and make your circuit radiate more RFI (if operating at such frequencies) - you can also get signal leakage and pickup between these points.
  
  2) When you leave the entire length of component lead in place while you solder, it acts as a heatsink and takes heat away from the joint you are trying to make and so it takes longer to heat the joint for a good solder flow - this additional time is not much, but it does increase the risk of overheating the component.
  
  2) Clean with steel wool!!?? OMFG
  
  Why yes, I AM an electronics engineer.
- tcrawford, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1FisherMan: You don’t need a lesson on SMT soldering because nobody at home is going to have a solder stencil printer (to apply the solder paste). Now yes you can use your oven at home to bake your boards...but I wouldn’t eat anything baked in that oven anymore...lol...even if it was lead free paste...lol
- Jonnio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Soldering SMT components does not have to be done with an oven. You can quite easily hand solder a bare board of even the smallest SMT components (just not BGA). The oven is just the way to mass attach components.
  
  Fisherman, no the components are not affected by that amount of heat, comercial ovens go to extreme temperatures and do not affect most components.
- tcrawford, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Jonnio: Well yeah you don’t need an oven to solder SMT boards...but if you solder it by hand and your not doing rework that totally defeats the purpose of SMT!
t0ny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I learned to solder on my own. And well I'm not so good :)
montoya, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I learned from my stepfather. It's a very complex thing, if you don't do it right nothing works!
psylence, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Wow, Step 7, fix the freakin colors on your site!
- modian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8how to make this page legible:
  in ff: view > page style > no style
  in opera: view > style > user mode
  in ie: hahaha, you're screwed! just copy and paste into notepad or something.
- midorigin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"in ff: view > page style > no style"
  
  yep, that's first thing i did when the page loaded. i suppose there could be some kind of extension to do that for unreadable color schemes automatically... hmm.
- modian, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1there is - 'zap colors' bookmarklet from here:
  http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/
  just drag and drop it onto your toolbar & click it to activate.
ericesque, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3funny, I'd say the same thing about text colors on websites....

oh wait! It's not a complex thing. If you don't know what you're doing, stick with black text on white background.
jtrowe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4soldering is not fun to learn! this guide is really neat!
Vigo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm impressed I thought for sure some leetist would be on here talking about how good he is at soldering and how lame the story is.
- ggko, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3It's not lame. My dog found it helpful.
Achilles1942, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1uh cool i guess
davidirock, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2In art class thouse two collors are complementarty. But, in real life they don't work good for a web site copy and past this in your browser bar when looking at the page to fix it (all one line)

javascript:(function(){function R(w){try{var d=w.document,j,i,t,T,N,b,r=1,C;for(j=0;t=["object","embed","applet","iframe"][j];++j){T=d.getElementsByTagName(t);for(i=T.length-1;(i+1)&&(N=T[i]);--i)if(j!=3||!R((C=N.contentWindow)?C:N.contentDocument.defaultView)){b=d.createElement("div");b.style.width=N.width; b.style.height=N.height;b.innerHTML=""+(j==3?"third-party "+t:t)+"";N.parentNode.replaceChild(b,N);}}}catch(E){r=0}return r}R(self);var i,x;for(i=0;x=frames[i];++i)R(x)})(); javascript:(function(){var newSS, styles='* { background: white ! important; color: black !important } :link, :link * { color: #0000EE !important } :visited, :visited * { color: #551A8B !important }'; if(document.createStyleSheet) { document.createStyleSheet("javascript:'"+styles+"'"); } else { newSS=document.createElement('link'); newSS.rel='stylesheet'; newSS.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styles); document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(newSS); } })(); javascript:(function(){var d=document; function K(N,w) { var nn = d.createElement(w), C = N.childNodes, i; for(i=C.length-1;i>=0;--i) nn.insertBefore(C[i],nn.childNodes[0]); N.parentNode.replaceChild(nn,N); } function Z(t,w) { var T = document.getElementsByTagName(t), j; for (j=T.length-1;j>=0;--j) K(T[j],w); } Z("blink", "span"); Z("marquee", "div"); })(); javascript:(function(){var H=["mouseover","mouseout","unload","resize"],o=window.opera; if(document.addEventListener/*MOZ*/&&!o) for(j in H)document.addEventListener(H[j],function(e){e.stopPropagation();},true); else if(window.captureEvents/*NS4*/&&!o) { document.captureEvents(-1/*ALL*/);for(j in H)window["on"+H[j]]=null;} else/*IE*/ {function R(N){var i,x;for(j in H)if(N["on"+H[j]]/*NOT TEXTNODE*/)N["on"+H[j]]=null;for(i=0;x=N.childNodes[i];++i)R(x);}R(document);}})(); javascript:(function() { var c, tID, iID; tID = setTimeout(function(){}, 0); for (c=1; c
- davidirock, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1sorry messed up on a few spots don't think it will work.
  
  adding this to then end might make it work but now realizing that digg users probibly have a simpler way to make it black and white it this is probibly useless but here is the rest anyway
- davidirock, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2*****
dpm1661, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5If the site goes down, don't worry. The page hasn't changed much since 1999.
http://web.archive.org/web/19991012230350/http://aaroncake.net/electronics/solder.htm
- boredzo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Missing the latest innovations in soldering technology, is it?
dmsteg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes this is old but you know what... I coulda used this info a couple weeks ago when I (thought I) fried an xbox motherboard (I was able to salvage it after some trial and error).

Good digg.
mushoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Not to spam but I find learning-by-watching to be more helpful. Plus It's from Nasa.

http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/elab/soldering.htm

I think this has already been posted here several times, good stuff.
- arcman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Exactly what I was coming in to say.
  Comment dugg.
eleazar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Nice succinct write-up. You don't necessarily have to resolder a cold joint, though. If you have access to flux, just dab a little on there and the solder turns nice and shiny again.
- lochness, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1null post
zybch, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6Can somebody please explain to me why americans all seem to pronounce 'solder' in the most stupid way.
Sounds like you guys are saying 'sar-tar' instead of 'sol-der'
Drives me nuts.
- eleazar, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3It sounds like the NASA guy is pronouncing it "sodder", which is correct.
- lochness, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4LOL - That was exactly my first thought when I saw this posted.
  
  Where I grew up it we say it sole-der, not sodd-er.
  
  Not sure where in the Enlish language we started with the silent "L" replacing it with a "dd" :-)
  
  Either way it's definitaly an acquired skill. I always seem to mess it up somehow.
- m85476585, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I say sodder. The silent L is not changing to 'dd' because it was originally L*D*, so if you don't pronounce the L there is just a D.
gol706, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2My one bit of advice is to grab the iron by the nice plastic end and not the metal one. It works much better that way.

Shudder, I still remember the time I made that mistake, till the throbbing pain set in the sound was actually the worst part, I can still hear my skin frying every time I solder something.
- briangig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've worked in the restaurant business all my life, and nothing is more painful than the wrong end of a soldering iron. It's more melting the skin than burning.
pak314, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I find the most important advice is to use a good soldering iron. Something with a temperature controlled tip makes it a lot easier. Secondly have liquid flux handy to make surfaces clean for good joints. With these two tips, even I can do 208 pin surface mount packages easily.
MyNameIsLee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1My brother saw me reading this and asked "What's soldering?" Pronounced Soul-der-ing.....

sigh...
- briangig, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3when I was a little kid, I thought it was "souldering", so every once in a while, it will slip out...
- dreamkatcha, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The Americans have spoken. That settles that one then.
- hiro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"My brother saw me reading this and asked "What's soldering?" Pronounced Soul-der-ing....."
  
  Wow, you now look a tool - he's correct
- Misanthrope, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=solder
  
  The dictionary thinks his brother was wrong.
- dreamkatcha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1American English isn't English English.
vlad50, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Those photos are so shopped. !!!!!!!FAKE!!!!!!
- VegaObscura3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1WTF?
  
  It's just a guy holding a component and such, why would anyone fake such an easy thing?
  
  Or maybe you were just mocking the people that call everything fake.
radu5er, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Soldering is an art. Practice, practice, practice. Try ripping some old printed circuit boards apart then build some inexpensive kits.
namit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Thats cool i had a bit of trial and error going on and burning my hands. This should help me.
bigpeeler, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I'll stick with SuperGlue.
krazikamikaze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1One of the mistakes I consistently made when I was new to soldering was always cranking the temperature up to the max. Too much heat can fry components, melt the board material around the pad, and even cause the pad to detatch from the board.
sofa0ne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Stuffhappens hit the nail on the head.
This site honestly has it wrong and it wouldn't meet IPC standards.

It should also be noted that Flux (water based/non/etc.) can really play a large part in soldering.
espek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I recently found this Hakko cordless soldering iron to be the perfect job for small jobs. Do not confuse this with cheap hobby soldering irons, this is from Hakko a true professional grade brand of soldering equipment for industrial use. It's real nice unit with two choices of tips. Check it out: http://www.electrowisehsv.com/cms/?p=436
- VegaObscura3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'd love to have that iron. It looks like such a better shape than the one I have now. It has a big cord at the back that gets SO in the way. Also I like how long and thin the tip on that one is. And the I have now (from walmart) costs MORE than that one. And also, it's handle breaks way too easy. I just deal with it broken.
PAddLePoP, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2On a random note,

Can someone tell me why Americans pronounce 'Solder' as in Sol-Der as Sodder?

There is an L in here, or can't you guys see it?
VegaObscura3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2And it's pronounced Toe-Mah-Toe
porto88, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0very nice find, soldering is a skill that more people need to know, im glad people put up tutorials like this, and i think we all burned ourselves at sometime
wwwyourworld.com andrewportolese.com
timothyjackson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Some good lead free solder

http://www.plumbersurplus.com/ProductList.aspx?Cat=785
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How To Solder

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