Here it is. [Samgr / Flickr]
We’re another step closer to constructing a working theremin for our show, thanks to the ever-awesome Ray Fallon at WGBH, who loaned us a soldering iron. Now I can get moving for real, perhaps after a quick internet brushup on solderology. Do you have any tips? I feel very much a member of the post-ham-radio generation.
Yeah.. I have some advice. Practice! Practice on something other then your kit. See if there are some broken cables around the studio you can try to fix. Try to solder some wires together. It’s not as easy as it looks. Well, it’s easy like writing is easy, but how many years of holding a pen did it take to have penmenship? Not to discoruage you, the sooner you start soldering the sooner you will be good at it. You mentioned that you were of the “post ham-radio generation” but soldering is more important now then ever! Because now everything has printed circuit boards. Atleast half of electronics that “break” just have a bad solder joint. I find it a very helpful and money saving skill.
Your man seems to have loaned your a rather “bad ass” soldering iron, so you’ve got an advantage already. Most people learn with crappy $5 irons. Use lead free solder, it works fine, don’t listen to anyone who tells you different, they’re just saying that because of the brain damage they got from the lead fumes.
So, for the actual advice:
Overheating. Think of it like ironing your shirt. Not enough heat and you’ll just make it worse, too much heat and you’ll ruin it. The biggest amature mistake in soldering is overheating components while you try to solder them, especially chips, they cook more easily. Also today’s solder has the flux in it, but it cooks away if you heat it too long. Without the flux you’re sunk. See that sponge? wet it with water, use it to cool your iron off if it’s too hot. You need enough heat but not too much, you need to find that magical place, that’s why I suggest practicing on something else first.
The tip. It’s possible for someone who knows what they’re doing to use an old crappy rusty messy tip, and maybe not even notice it, but for a beginner, a new tip will help. It’s like $3 for a bag of three and they simply thread in. If you want to get your electronics “game on” go buy them an an electronic supply store rather then a Radio Shack. It’s like that feeling you get when you take your car to the dealer, instead of your buddy around the corner. Keep your tip clean. If you cook the flux out of the solder the fluxless solder will stick to your tip. Use a gentle flicking motion to get it off while the iron is hot, like you’re Stewart Copeland playing a snare drum.
Well, I hope that helps. I really “learned” to solder years after I’d been doing it. I was making a 16 channel snake for my first recording studio, and somewhere half way through it, it got a whole lot easier and I suddenly found that Zen place. Practice, practice, practice.
Good luck.
Thanks Marc, this is incredibly helpful!
I also soldered some stuff myself, back in the day, and was pretty ok at it; if you need any help, you know where I am.
Actually, that looks like a weller temperature-controlled station – downside, tips cost $3.04 each from Newark, up to $5 or 6 from other soruces, and won’t be found at radio-shack at all. Anybody knows a source cheaper than Newark that isn’t an “auction site”, I’m all ears, but I doubt one exists. They come in 3 temperature ranges if it’s a fixed-temp setup – or it may be a variable, I can’t tell from the picture. Most fixed-temp use the 700 F tips, which will be marked “7″ on the back of the tip if you unscrew the collar and take the tip out. There’s also 6 and 8, and I’ve never used a variable, so I don’t know what those look like.
Upside – unlikely to need a tip, as they don’t cook themselves. Wet that sponge with clean water and wipe the crud off the tip with it, then add a bit of fresh solder to the tip directly.
Soldering advice – clean is good. heat the parts with the clean, tinned iron, and apply solder to the parts, not the iron. If you apply solder to the iron you can blob it on like wax, which does not work. You wan the parts to be hot enough to melt the solder, which will then wick in and work very nicely.
Don’t file the tip to “clean” it – they are iron-plated, and if the iron is cut through, or corroded through, the tip dies a rapid and messy death of corrosion.