Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Skillbuilder: Learn to Solder”.
Welcome back to the workshop, i’m tyler and today we’re going to take a step back and cover really fundamental maker skill soldering. If you already know how you probably skip over this video. But if you don’t it’s time, you learn. If you do any work with electronics.
Soldering is one of the most valuable skills you can learn from circuit components to wire splices soldering allows you to join any two components together with a strong conductive bond. There’S two key components: solder and heat solder is a flexible metal alloy with a low melting point. There’S a few different types, but the biggest differentiator is whether your solder is lead free or not. Leaded solder is a lot easier to work with, but it’s also toxic. However, it is safe to use as long as you wash your hands thoroughly after handling lead-free solder is non-toxic, but it requires a higher temperature iron to get good solder joints. The heat comes from the soldering iron.
A soldering iron is a pencil-like tool whose tip can heat up to 800 degrees fahrenheit at this temperature, the solder will melt flowing into the joint like a liquid, forming the bond and fusing the two elements together. There’S plenty of different types of soldering irons. If you can get your hands on a digital station like this one you’ll be able to have really fine control over the temperature of the iron. But if you’re, just starting out, don’t be afraid to use one of these simple types of irons, they do a great job too, there’s no better way to learn to solder than to splice two wires. Together. I have my workspace prepared by holding both ends of the wire in a tool called helping hands. The two wire ends are twisted together in preparation for the solder, and i already have a piece of shrink tubing ready to protect the joint. Once it’s made prepare the iron for soldering by first cleaning it you can either use a damp sponge, or one of these brass coils then melt a tiny amount of solder onto the tip of the iron. This is called tinning and will help the heat transfer from the soldering iron into the solder joint hold the iron underneath the wire joint gently pressing against it. You want the heat of the iron to transfer into the wire ends after a few seconds touch the solder into the joint, letting it melt fusing. The two wire ends together.
Once the solder cools you can protect and insulate the splice with the shrink tubing, soldering components onto a pcb is a very similar process. Insert the component into your board sliding the wire legs through the holes bend the legs outwards, so the component doesn’t fall out when you flip the board over touch the iron to the component leg and the solder pad simultaneously. So they both heat up with a clean and tinned iron. It should only take two to three seconds: touch the solder to the other side of the component leg and wait for the solder to melt into the joint make sure the solder is actually bonding the leg to the solder pad.
Sometimes it forms a ball like this. It is called a cold solder. Electronic connections like this will be weak and extremely temperamental. Once you have a good join trim off the excess, with a pair of flush, cutters, clean and re-tint the iron.
Every few connections you make dirty tools, make for bad solder connections and that’s all it really is to soldering in its most basic form, of course, everybody’s going to have their own tips and tricks that they’ve learned over the years. What are some of yours? Let us know in the comments below thanks for watching and we’ll see you in the next article you .