Soldering 101 I am Geordy. After high school I had a job doing board-level repair on CRT monitors back when they were still worth repairing. I ended up fixing all kinds of devices that I would have written off had I not known better. For instance, CRT monitors that had been dropped and had a whole corner of the circuit board cracked off of it.

PRELIMINARY CRAP

Safety first ● Well ventilated area ● Wash your hands ● Use an iron stand ● Mind the hot iron ● Flux can spatter

More safety tips ● Don't be like Jesus

Essential Equipment ● Hakko 936 solder station $80 ● High quality leaded solder (1lb Kester $25) ● No-clean flux pen ($12) ● Good dikes (Xcelite $5-$10) ● Desoldering wick (Chem-wik $5-$10) ● Good work light (Ikea? $10)

Optional Items ● Helping hands w/loupe (YMMV) ● Tweezers (mostly for surface mount) ● Spray flux remover

Where to shop locally Fry's in Renton. Decent selection, good prices. Vetco in Bellevue. Great selection but expensive.

Secure your work If you are using helping hands, racket down the nuts and make sure it's stable and not going to move when you hit your work with the iron. Protip: My favorite alternative to helping hands is to use blue fun-tak. Not sure how heatproof it is since I never really use it near the iron though anyways. Just use a big blob to affix your work to your desk. Never use fun-tak for anything else after you have soldered with it. You will have picked up some lead content in that fun-tak so you don't want the kids mistaking it for bubblegum.

Keep your tip clean ● Clean clean clean. ● Extremely important ● Wet sponge ● Waterless cleaner ● Filing is bad ● Avoid melting plastic

TECHNIQUE

Start your iron! ● Set your solder station to 700 degrees ● Iron will take 60 seconds ● Solder station 10-15

Flux: What's the point? ● Etches & cleans ● Rosin flux evaporates ● Rejuvenates wick ● Better flux exists now

Tinning Another subject related to cleaning is tinning your tip. You want the tip nice and shining with no excess solder. The point of this is that the flux is cleaning the tip more than the solder itself. You will need to do this more often with lower quality or older tips but if your iron has been sitting turned on and unused for a long period of time, you will probably need to tin it again.

Technique Heat one side of the component and the trace. Apply solder to the other. If the components are salvage or you are doing a repair, you might need some flux. You will want to see proper angle, shininess and a slight concave appearance to the finished solder joint.

Avoid Bad Solder Joints ● Don't overheat the component. Resistors and capacitors or more resilient but IC's and such area less so. Only use as much heat as is required and then pull away. ● Don't let the component move as the solder is cooling off.

Aftermath ● Careful of your eyes when cutting component leads. ● Don't cut the leads too short.

Repairs

Bad solder joints ● Bad/thin solder joints like this can crack ● Just heat it up and add more solder. ● Sometimes the wire is oxidize so scape or flux it.

Lifted traces ● Too much heat can cause delamination ● Fix with pieces of wick

Solder bridges

Desoldering

Tools of the Trade

Turn it up to 11! ● Don't be afraid to turn the heat up for desoldering ● If your wick is old or not working well, dip it in flux or use the flux pen on it.

Momentum ● Solder wick is my favorite. ● Sometimes solder wick isn't working, I'll add more solder to build momentum.

Final Thoughts ● Problems ● Questions