Submitted 1 year ago by Phlogiston@sh.itjust.works to electronics@discuss.tchncs.de
Another tip that doesn’t seem to have been covered, clean the pads you are soldering to. A quick buff with some steel wool to get them nice and shiny. If you’ve touched it with your hands, the oils from your hands can make it hard to solder to the pads.
Impressive you got a connection without melting the solder.
First of all, welcome to the collective of silicon wizards (a.k.a electronics engineers) your robe and hat are being dispatched as we speak.
Second, well done for attempting a new skill most are too afraid to even consider.
Third, all of the advice offered here about flux and tinning the wire ends is sound. So I’ll offer some other advice, check what temperature you set the soldering iron to. It might be too low. I prefer putting my temp at 350 degC. Others will argue for a slightly different temperature.
If your answer is “but I don’t know what temperature my soldering iron is at” then you ought to get one with a temperature control. I won’t recommend a particular brand or price point because you should only spend what you can afford on a hobby. But there’s plenty of articles and opinions (be careful about some of those being the same) about which brands are good quality at different price points.
Also, two additional things to think about getting:
A basic as fuck desktop extractor fan that has a carbon filter. This will be for the flux fumes.
Some form of overhead lighting and magnification. These can be separate but you can get magnifying lamps. This will help when you start venturing into the world of surface mount components.
Good luck and we’re looking forward to seeing your future creations 😊
If you end up buying some flux then I’d recommend you also buy and try a block of violinist rosin:
www.ebay.com.au/itm/315948528490
You break it up and then dab chunks onto your joint whilst soldering. Some will melt off and then burn. From there it acts just like any flux: reduces the metal oxides, makes the solder suddenly flow (behave) a lot better and provides some level of temporary oxygen shielding with its off-gassing products.
Pros:
Cons:
I use it often, it’s my favourite for both big joints and fixing smd work. Grab some and try it :) The worst you will be out of pocket is a few dollars.
My 103 year old grandma has better joints
if we roast them, they will de-solder, which is s good thing, so you could try again
I’d suggest a decongestant, looks like you’ve got a lot of snot going on there =]
In all seriousness though, we all have to start somewhere. Just keep practicing, you’ll get the hang of it.
Just keep practicing. You’ll start to see the differences if you try lots out. Others have given good input, but a lot of it just comes from doing it over and over again.
All that needs is some flux and more solder per joint.
Alternatively (and what I personally prefer), you can tin both ends and then join them together. In chemistry, the rule is called “like likes like”, which means that similar materials like to join together, and dissimilar materials don’t.
Better than I can do, I don’t have the context to roast you.
Check if your solder contains flux. Often, you will want to apply additional flux manually anyway.
But, most importantly: it looks like you’re trying to touch the hot iron with your solder (or vice versa). Don’t do that. Use the iron to heat up the wire and then touch the solder to the wire and let it wick up once sufficiently hot. However, you will want to have a bit of melted solder on the tip of your iron to enhance heat conductivity.
As others have said, pre-tin your wires before connecting them to anything.
And yeah, so far, it’s a hot mess. But you’ll get there in no time. Watch a video for proper technique.
Came for the roasting. Left with a load of practical tips to improve my soldering.
With connections like these who needs resistors?.
With enough current those leads will re-solder themselves.
It’s a built-in fuse. It’s not a bug. It’s a safety feature
Just tin your wire ends. Heat them up and wick solder onto them.
Hey! Props to you for trying something new. While the through hole components look OK, soldering large gauge wire can be quite tricky, especially if the soldering iron is not powerful. What soldering iron do you use? In these cases especially, it is important to wickthee wire first, wick the soldering pad and finally assemble the two. Raising the iron temperature for this can also be useful (I sometimes use 400° or a bit higher). It is counter intuitive, but hotter iron means quicker soldering job, and less heat in the surrounding area (e.g cable’s insulator)
It’s bad, you need to twist the wire strands together, use flux. In general look up some video guide on soldering they explain it pretty good. Anyway it’s not a brain surgery just practice.
I don’t need to, looks like you already did.
Nope 😊
Although if you wanted to tin the wires a little better, I’ve found flux helps loads especially when using lead free solder. I used to struggle before trying it.
You will get better results if you twist the cables and then saturate them with solder before soldering them onto the PCB. Even better might be to get some solder on the board too before soldering
You need a lot of practice. Maybe read a tutorial or watch a Youtube video on how to solder, and how to see if a joint looks alright. Several pople made great tutorials and videos about this.
No.
NaevaTheRat@vegantheoryclub.org 1 year ago
You’re fine, it’s practice.
Some of those wires are quite thick which will pull heat away fast making soldering with shitty equipment hard. A good soldering iron* set to the correct temperature will help massively. Flux gets you then last 20% of the way. Most solders are flux cored, but a little pot of rosin flux you either dip the end of a wire in or dab on (i use a sharpened chop stick because no static and cheap) and suddenly the solder flows like water.
Remember not to heat the solder and instead heat the joint. My favoured technique is to “tin” both sides individually and then put then against each other and a quick touch with the iron to make the joint. Ensures you have good contact and doesn’t require growing extra fingers although it is slower.
Hobbiest electronics don’t need perfection, some failure is fine you can always repair it since you made it.
Never be embarressed to learn a new skill!