Category Archives: solder

What the Flux: How Does Solder Work Anyway?

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I’ve been soldering for a long time, and I take pride in my abilities. I won’t say that I’m the best solder-slinger around, but I’m pretty good at this essential shop skill — at least for through-hole and “traditional” soldering; I haven’t had much practice at SMD stuff yet. I’m confident that I could make a good, strong, stable joint that’s both electrically and mechanically sound in just about any kind of wire or conductor.

But like some many of us, I learned soldering as a practical skill; put solder and iron together, observe results, repeat the stuff that works …read more

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Iron Tips: Soldering Headphones and Enamel Wire

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We’ve all had that treasured pair of headphones fail us. One moment we’re jamming out to our favorite song, then, betrayal. The right ear goes out. No wait. It’s back. No, damn, it’s gone. It works for a while and then no jiggling of the wire will bring it back. So we think to ourselves, we’ve soldered before. This is nothing. We’ll just splice the wire together.

So we open it up only to be faced with the worst imaginable configuration: little strands of copper enamel wire intertwined with nylon for some reason. How does a mortal solder this? First …read more

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Hackerspace Takes Fume Extraction Seriously

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At first we laughed at the ridiculously over-the-top fume extraction system this hackerspace built for itself. Then we thought about seriously questionable donation rolls of solder some of the members managed to find and bring in. The kind of roll where the local greybeard assures you that a Californian State Trooper has permission to shoot you if you try to take it into the state, but damn does it solder well. They may be onto something is all we’re saying. But on a serious note, for a communal space like this one, a great air quality plan makes the place …read more

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Tools of the Trade – Through Hole Assembly

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In our last installment of Tools of the Trade, we had just finished doing the inspection of the surface mount part of the PCB. Next in the process is the through hole components. Depending on the PCB, the order may change slightly, but generally it makes more sense to get all the SMT work done before moving to the through hole work.

Through hole used to be the standard, but as the need for size reduction and automation increased, SMT gained favor. However, there are still a lot of reasons to use through hole components, so they aren’t going away …read more

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Ask Hackaday: How Hard Is It To Make A Bad Solder Joint?

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When you learn to solder, you are warned about the pitfalls of creating a solder joint. Too much solder, too little solder, cold joints, dry joints, failing to “wet” the joint properly, a plethora of terms are explained  if you read one of the many online guides to soldering.

Unsurprisingly it can all seem rather daunting to a novice, especially if they are not used to the dexterity required to manipulate a tool on a very small-scale at a distance. And since the soldering iron likely to be in the hands of a beginner will not be one of the …read more

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“I Can Reflow” Merit Badge

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[Nick Sayer] can reflow, and he can prove it. He designed a simple blinking-LED circuit that uses SMD parts to, well, blink LEDs. That’s not the point, though. It’s designed to be a test platform for reflow soldering, and to use a minimum number of valuable parts. Plus, it says “I can reflow!” in exposed copper. What else do you want?

OK, as far as “proving it” goes, the badge isn’t 100% reliable — we hand-solder 0805 components all day long. But still, if you want to try your hand at reflowing a circuit board, and you don’t want to …read more

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Solder at Room Temperature

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Have you ever seen the science experiment (or magic trick?) where you get water supercooled to where it isn’t frozen, but then it freezes when you touch it, pour it, or otherwise disturb it? Apparently, ice crystals form around impurities or disturbances in the liquid and then “spread.” A similar effect can occur in metals where the molten metal cools in such a way that it stays melted even below the temperature that would usually cause it to melt.

[Martin Thuo] at Iowa University used this property to make solder joints at room temperature using Field’s metal (a combination of …read more

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