How am I supposed to go about soldering this?

Factual Questions
1

I hate it when I read all the guides and stuff still doesn’t make any sense. . . . ugh.

Ok, soldering iron, check. Nice controlled temp one, goes up to 700f.

Solder, check, electrical joint hobbyist stuff non-conductive and the whole bit.

Resistors, check, bought huge variety pack, figured out what I needed later, but hey, whatever.

Wire; check, 24guage threaded just like various guides said (always buy threaded wire and the like)

Practiced soldering wires together like guides said, ok, that works.

Tried to solder resistor to wire. . . .

Uh, ok. Isn’t supposed to get quite that hot I don’t think. . . heh.

Basic question is that without doing various icky non-nice-NobodyElsesStuffLooksLikeThat ways of pre-connecting the wire to the terminal of the resistor;

How the HELL am I supposed to connect the wire to the terminal AND solder it at the same time?

I have a rather wacky setup used to hold wires in place and such, ok, works fine, but when doing wires normally they are wound together a bit first (again, as per various guides say to do), and, err, heh. Does not work with wire and resistor on breadboard (uh, one site said it is perfboard. )

Oh yah, and why doesn’t my multimeter give me a valid ‘continuity’ beep reading when going between the two terminals of a resistor? Works fine for the wire, but NONE of the resistors I bought seem to give a reading of any sorts when I test for continuity.

Tests fine for resistance though. :slight_smile:

2

You may have a meter that reads “continuity” as very low ohms, so a resister would look like an ‘open’ to it. If you’re getting the correct resistance reading, then you’ve got a good resister (by definition).

Are your leads clean? Use a little flux paste to ensure that they’re clean. Flux-core solder is useless for electronincs, IMO, so get a small tube or tub of flux and an acid brush for painting it on. You’ll need some alcohol for cleaning off the work afterwards, but IMO, it’s always worth it.

Have you tinned your leads first? Tinning is the process of melting just a little solder onto the wire or lead so that the end of the wire or lead is nice and shiny with no globs or spiky bits poking out.

Are you using heat sinks? Heat sinks are little metal clamps that you place between the solder joint and the component, to keep the component from getting too hot. Heat sinks placed too close to the joint may cause the joint to stay too cold for an effective solder joint.

3

Not an electrician, but I do solder routinely at work.

You can use a hemostat to pinch the wire to the resistor while you solder. The hemostat shouldn’t stick – it’ll actually act as sort of a heat sink. But that may not be desirable.

If you use the ohm scale on your meter, you’ll read resistance. If you don’t get a reading, you may have smoked the resistor with too much heat. I generally use a 15 watt soldering pencil for electronic type work. It’s also possible that the resistance value of the component is too high to allow the audible continuity signal. Again, switch to ohms to verify.

4

chipping that PS2 huh? :slight_smile:
Sorry I have nothing to add. I once tried to fix up a modem but realize I’m much clumsier than I thought. Hey it looked easy from seeing the other geeks do their own equipment. I decided I’m not that geeky.

5

My first thought would have not been a PS2 mod chip but the Afterburner backlight for the GBA. If thats the case **Com2Kid
** let me know how it turns out. Still waiting for my kit.

6

LOL, no, sorry. I do wish that I had the money for either though.
Just trying to connect those bleeming LED lights I asked about in an earlier thread today. :slight_smile:

::has gotten three connected so far::

Bleh, getting the pins on the LEDs connected together is a pain!

:slight_smile:

7

Soldering is an art. Interestingly, in the old days when everything had discrete components and point to point wiring, tubes, etc. the majority of employees were women.

Solder is not glue, there must be a mechanical connection first before soldering. Draw your needle nose pliers across the wire or leads to get bright, shiny metal and crimp the two components together. A tinned iron is essential, and use a wet sponge to clean the tip after every use. A fresh tiny dab of solder on the tip will conduct heat to the component faster, and then touch the solder to the work, not the iron. When it flows completely over the part, remove the iron and let the part cool undisturbed.

A good solder joint will be shiny, almost like chrome. That’s all there is to it, and practice helps.

8

Try tinning the leads. This means get solder over the two leads and then try to solder them together. It will be pretty easy to just get solder over one lead at a time. It will make the solder flow much better. Also get some flux it helps a great deal.

Where I work most of the rework people are women even in this day and age of surface mount parts.

9

I’ve never had a problem with soldering. :smiley:

Now, welding I have no problem with either, but arc welding, ack!

10

#1 secret to soldering that newbies tend to miss - heat the part, not the solder. Then the solder will flow onto the part effortlessly. If you do it the other way around you create cold solder joints. Tinning up the parts also helps. I have a small vise that I use to hold down whatever board I am working on. That helps eliminate a lot of the 3 handed manuevers that occasionally seem necessary.

All of the solderers where I work who can do surface mount parts are women. I never really paid attention to that until you pointed it out. Hmmm…

11

Mmm.

Been a while since I’ve done this, but…

  1. Wipe down the parts to be soldered with alcohol and a q-tip.

  2. Hold the solder in your teeth. Damn the health warnings.

  3. Put the parts together the way you want them.

  4. Hold the soldering iron to the joint for a second or two. Sometimes four or five, but it does depend on what you’re soldering.

  5. Touch the solder to the joint.

That’s really about it. Sometimes it takes a little finesse, but that only comes with practice.

12

Solder is also not paint. Hold the iron still while feeding the solder into the joint. I used to walk around the lab with a ruler as an empty threat to smack the hands of any students I saw trying to use the iron to smear the semi-molten solder over the joint.

The iron is there to heat up the two things that are to be joined; to do this it needs to be clean & tinned. Once the leads are hot enough, the solder will melt upon them & be drawn into the joint by capillary action.

And an ordinary eraser works well at cleaning up the copper lands of circuit boards.

13

Dexterity is the answer.

I can hold a component between the two smallest fingers, and another component between the thumb and forefinger, then bring them together and holding the iron with the thumb and forefinger of the other hand and the solder with the two smallest fingers of the smae hand, you just bring them all together for the necessary amount of time.

…but then I have been at it for 20 odd years…

or you could use a jig to hold one or more of the components, most electronic retailers have them, just a bucnh of crocodile clips flexibly mounted on a base.
I personally find these cumbersome and slow but they work for newbies.

14

Some PS2 solder points are as big as a period: . Same on the Xbox.- or thats what people said- I don’t
know how they deal with points that small.

I’m confused about using a soldering iron or a gun. Someone said not to solder electrical boards
with a gun because they carry electrical charges on the tip, is this right?

Also, practice soldering on some old video cards or printer cards first until you get it right.
Putting the iron too long on a component may cause it to fall off.

15

I like the old, point to point wiring stuff found in tubed amps, stereos and radios. Obviously designed with future repairs in mind, the equivalent of a 57 Chevy, while I am not ham handed by any means solder joints ‘as big as a period’ don’t wang my twang.

The modern stuff falls prey to the same faults as the vintage gear (e.g. power supply) but oftentimes I can’t even open the device to get at it, much less repair it.

16

Soldering guns are way too hot (over 25W) to be working on standard PCBs. Their excessive heat will cause the metal traces & lands to detach from the board, seriously degrading the quality of the work. For the same reason they should not be used where semiconductors are nearby. The intense heat will travel up the leads and into the delicate junction, toasting it. I prefer 12-25 watts for standard PCBs.

No modern soldering iron should have electrical charges on its tip. The tips should be earth-grounded through via power source.

17

I’ve been soldering for 20+ years. The toughest job was a 12- pin HRS video connector,and I had to protect each line with shrink tubing. A few hints. ( No offense to those I contradict ).

  1. NEVER place solder in your mouth. For less than $ 10.00, you can go to Radio Shack and buy an armature stand that has small alligator clamps to hold two wires close together. That frees up your hands to hold the iron, and the solder.

  2. Use the proper kind of solder, and proper size/shape of tip. Using a large 35 watt Weller-type of soldering gun is a recipe for disaster when doing small electronic works.

  3. Try to have some small fan blowing air by you if you are going to do a lot of this. You are melting lead, and inhaling the fumes is not healthy.

  4. Buy several important supplies, in addition to the right iron. For surface-mounted p.c. board type work, buy both a Solder Sucker AND Solder Wick. The solder sucker removes liquid solder bits before they cool. The solder wick will wick up a small pool or droplet of molten solder again, before it cools.

  5. If you have excess solder around your solder site and it has cooled, do NOT try to scrape or chip it off !!! You risk the integrity of the solder site, and of the board, by doing so. Use a wick, or solder sucker and just carefully melt away the excess with the soldering iron.

  6. For a few dollars at Radio Shack, you can buy Solder Tip Tinner. Periodic application of the hot tip into the small pot of Solder Tip Tinner will re-tin the tip with a cleansing agent and give it a nice shiny conductive coating again.

  7. Several people have talked about how you don’t solder the solder, you solder the WIRES by heating THEM, then you apply the solder wire at the point where you want to join them. While I won’t disagree with that theory ( cause it’s right on the money ), something important must be kept in mind here. Resistors, capacitors and such are HIGHLY thermal sensitive. The time it takes to heat the wire up , 1/16th of an inch from a resistor to the temperature needed to melt solder onto it is longer than the time it takes the high heat to travel the 1/16th inch, and damage the resistor, altering it’s values.

You have to strike a balance. When I’m working plain copper wire, I heat the wire with the iron, having twisted together the two ends. ( Or, crimped them in close so they’re “stuck” together ). I then apply the solder, and keep it hot so it’s a good shiny solder joint.

OTOH, if I have to solder a component into a board, or inline somewhere, I take a VERY different approach. I set the wire lead from the resistor ( for example ) up close to the wire it’s going to solder to. I then heat the plain copper wire, and lay a thick line of solder onto that copper. Then, keeping that copper wire layered with molten solder, I bring the resistor TO that area and press it to the copper, hoping the joint will take VERY quickly. If it takes, and is shiny, I’m good to go and have not overheated the electronic component.

Attrayant is right on the money. The ONLY charged tips I have ever witnessed are those machines used to attach terminal strip connectors in NiCad or NiMH battery packs. They are literally small arc machines, and as such let fly a controlled lightning bolt.

The pencil eraser trick rocks, by the by. I’ve used it for years to clean off surface corrosion on battery contacts where a pack slides in and I cannot reach it. If you really want to get ugly about it, you can clean a battery contact with a small bit of the finest grade steel wool made ( 0000 ? ) wrapped around the pencil eraser.

Every LCD display continuity tester I’ve owned has a Beep feature to show you continuity without looking at the LCD readout display. I bet yours has one too, you may have silenced it by mistake.

Good luck,
Cartooniverse