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How many here can actually solder?


Deang

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I was 10, dad knew I was fixing TVs/Radios, I ask for a solder iron, he had no problem with that and awile later comes out of the garage with one.

Couple years later I find out it was a Wood Burning pencil :o, Hell it worked!

I learned to solder dam good.

Now that is a good story!

Now for the rest of the solder iron story:

Couple of years of using the "Wood Burner" dad ask me to solder a couple wires on mine/HIS, HO gage train track, he watched, saying something like, WoW iv never seen anyone solder so fast/clean!, I told him I had to get fast and good because if you try and do it slow it will snap crakle and pop, and fry whatever you are working on!

All he said was , TOO MUCH HEAT, TOO HOT OF IRON, I did not know any better, he said he would get me a "Real" Iron, that is when he told me I was using a Wood Burner :o

The next day I set out to figure out how to cool/adjust the heat in my "Wood Burner".

I remember thinking of what I could find that has a control for heat.

Ah Ha, Mom's Sunbeam Iron!

Got into that puppy, disconnected the heating elements and hooked up my "New Temp controlled solder iron".

Took a week for mom to ask if id seen it, I was informed the next day by dad, he found it!

All he said was, tell your mom I will come home with a new Sunbeam and you're solder iron, meanwile, im taking this to work with me.

Got my new iron that night. Never saw my woodburner again, but when I went to dad's work sometimes the guys kept looking at me yelling

"Hire Him"!

Burning fingers as a child taught me much :emotion-21:

Nothing like a great father...god I miss mine. He and my grandfather taught much of what I know about electronics. I started soldering at something like 8 years old. My father had a 40 year career in appliance repair at the peak he ran the metropolitan Detroit service fleet for Sears when Sears ruled that business in the 70's. My grandfather was an electrical engineer for Detroit Edison for 40 years. They both restored WWII ham radios at night and on the weekends.

Cheers Craig

Edited by NOSValves
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Solder.....screw that I use super glue...

One time at Klipsch, a very long time ago, we received a couple of networks in the mail and customer service brought them to the engineering lab because they wouldn't work... AK-2's or something like that. We couldn't find anything wrong. Schematically, they were correct and had a beautiful solder job. I went to lift a connection to check a component and it wouldn't come undone with the soldering iron. I think it was Jim Hunter that figured out what was going on. They had "resoldered" every single connection with ... wait for it.... Liquid Solder. Silver colored epoxy adhesive.

Edited by Old_Klipsch_Guy
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I've got good soldering equipment and the phone number of a good friend who is an expert.

 

I rebuilt his old Vette's Quadrajet Carb, he solders my stuff. Both are happy with the result.  :)

 

Sometimes I would repair external aluminum parts of the vette carbs with a patternmakers product called Zen which was two part green colored aluminum epoxy. It was 50 dollars a quart (at the time) and you needed two quarts. It was almost as good as tig welding it. It filed and formed really nice and had incredible strength.

JJK

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Surface mount  is the future of electronic components and soldering these tiny critters is an art in itself. I ordered some SMD transistors just to see how small they are and until you see them if is hard to fathom how tiny they really are. About the only Jfets that are commonly available now SMD ones. I have watched some youtube videos on how to solder SMD's but I have not tried to do so. 

 

 

Surface mount is a whole different animal. While you can do it with a small tip and a very steady hand, the right way is with a hot air iron. Even the solder you use is different. Instead of your typical solder on a roll, you use solder paste. It comes in a syringe type plunger. Under magnification you can see it is actually little solder balls suspended in a thick rosin fluid. Like standard soldering, it takes some practice to get it down. How hot the air is, how much solder paste, how close to the part you get, etc... The older I get the more magnification I need. Hence the Leica scope on my bench. I work more in the 0805 and 1206 arena, but the sizes range smaller starting with 0201 (0.6mm x 0.30mm) up to 2512 (6.3mm x 3.1mm).

 

Now this is for bench work. Vapor baths and ovens are industrial manufacturing soldering on a large scale.

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I can solder. Pipe with a propane torch. Electronic circuits with a soldering iron. Surface mount electronics under a microscope. You name it. If it can be soldered, I can solder it.

Surface mount  is the future of electronic components and soldering these tiny critters is an art in itself. I ordered some SMD transistors just to see how small they are and until you see them if is hard to fathom how tiny they really are. About the only Jfets that are commonly available now SMD ones. I have watched some youtube videos on how to solder SMD's but I have not tried to do so. 

 

I met my match a little while back. Our Chromecast was broken and I opened it up. The problem was a broken connection on the micro-USB connector. It was the finest pitch SMD I'd ever seen and I absolutely could not hold my hand/part/solder steady enough. I have it in a drawer just in case I start aging backwards and can suddenly fix it one day.

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Surface mount is a whole different animal. While you can do it with a small tip and a very steady hand, the right way is with a hot air iron. Even the solder you use is different. Instead of your typical solder on a roll, you use solder paste. It comes in a syringe type plunger. Under magnification you can see it is actually little solder balls suspended in a thick rosin fluid. Like standard soldering, it takes some practice to get it down. How hot the air is, how much solder paste, how close to the part you get, etc... The older I get the more magnification I need. Hence the Leica scope on my bench. I work more in the 0805 and 1206 arena, but the sizes range smaller starting with 0201 (0.6mm x 0.30mm) up to 2512 (6.3mm x 3.1mm).

 

Now this is for bench work. Vapor baths and ovens are industrial manufacturing soldering on a large scale.

 

I need to get a hot air soldering iron, I guess. We had them at a place I used to work. At home, I built a toaster oven SMD reflow oven (I love SparkFun Electronics), but the PIC controller needs to be reworked (smoked the solid state relay and haven't put in the new one), I use a stereo AmScope that I got off eBay (with a USB eyepiece camera) for a couple hundred dollars. But, the pitches they are getting down to are "felony stupid". The smallest tip I have for my Weller soldering station looks Mount Everest next to those newest connections and the solder I use looks like very coarse hair, it's so thin (silver solder). I just don't do it often enough anymore for the paste to last, even in the refrigerator.

Edited by Old_Klipsch_Guy
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  • 2 months later...

I can solder anything, from copper pipe to 0.031" open face strain gages you need a microscope to see.

31 years Quality control and Spacecraft assembly. Currently I do instrumentation and data recording.

I have modified almost everything I own from CD players to amps to speakers.

No Fear, nothing is safe!

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I can solder. I used to assemble computer mother boards for automated presses. I used to solder in all kinds of resistors, capacitors, wiring schematics, etc. to let us know the time, distance and force monitoring for a cycle of each press stroke on any number of assembly line projects for the big three. I admit, it has been a while now. I am getting ready to repair my subwoofer with a bad fuse and broken fuse case so I may be trying out my skills shortly.

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