Cool soldering and desoldering videos

[Ecir38]

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/02/hot_soldering_a.html

[crackyflipside]

Talk about a steady hand....

[joecarrow]

I'll tell you what bites is when you have a big IC like they have on that board, and realize that you have it flipped around, and don't have any extras!

[Wilk]

Find a soldering iron with a large flat tip, bout a 0.25 inch job. Cut a piece of solder equal to the length of all the pins on that side. Next cut a piece of solid copper wire about 16 gage the same length. Lay the solder right on the pins up next to the chip, and the copper wire right next to that. Set the iron to just under 800, and run it up and down the copper wire. All the solder will wick right off the pads and onto the wire. The copper in the wire is generally much purer than a circuit board pad, and there for will heat better pulling all the solder on to it, and off the pad.

Getting the that wire off after you flip the chip around correctly is a little more touchy. I suggest a small amount of super glue in the center of the chip to the board, and a pair of tweesers to remove the wire as you reflow the joints.

I appologise for misspellings, and bad english skills, I just got back from the pub

PS: The liquid flux stuff is your friend in this process. Use alot of it. If you can see what you are doing, you need to add more flux. The liquid solder that the PCB assemly lines use is close to 60% flux.

[jonathanb3478]

From the late 80's through the mid to late 90's, that was what my mom did for a living. Most of what she did was smaller than that, and and she had to use a lighted magnifying glass to do that stuff. She is the one who taught me to solder. My electronic engineer dad taught her, before he died.

In fact, one of my mom's employers during that time (she was paid for piece-work with this employer) did a comprehensive study on her, because if all their workers were as productive as she was, that company would not have had to move their assembly work overseas to compete.

Wanna know what they found out? She was just always on task, all the time. Except for lunch time and the old fashioned "the whole line goes on break following the break-time tones" pair of 15-minute breaks a day, she was setting up parts and soldering them. And I mean she was always on task. No chatting with the coworkers, talking on the phone, anything. It helped she was good at what she did, but so were many of the others. They just weren't always working, ya know? Of course they did not like my mom before that result got out, much less after. :rofl:

Now, none of those companies exist at all anymore, or if they still do exist, they do not do electronic assembly work using assembly workers any more. All of that work is done overseas, or is now automated SMT manufacturing.

Just thought I would share. ops:

[tyler]

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive...ldering_a.html

Very good examples of how it should be done.

[Amphiprion]

Am I supposed to be impressed by an 0805 SMT cap being soldered? Those are the EASY ones. TSSOP's and the like are what I'd consider the start of being challenging.

[Amphiprion]

Oh, and you know you are an electronics geek when you get home from the swimming pool, have water in your ears, and look at the solder sucker with a guilty curiosity.

[cotdt]

using the Cardas solder really makes things a lot easier. they flow very well. and they don't have lead.

[Amphiprion]

I've had good success with standard 63/37 solder and never felt the need for anything else. For DIP and through hole stuff I usually use 0.031" core 66 solder, and for SMT 0.015" core 50. I'd like some 0.015" with a larger core for when I have to solder to slightly oxidized copper boards, as I usually end up using paste flux or coating the board in solder-lac (wonderful stuff, but dry time is in the 2-day range).

If someone wants to send me a short strand of this Cardas stuff, I'll pay ya a buck. I'd like to see what all the enthusiasm is about. We do way more assembly work here at my job than the average DIY'er and we've never had trouble with the commonly available stuff (DO stay away from 60/40 though - no reason to use that anymore and the plastic state sucks once you're used to eutectic blends).

[ThomasW]

Oh, and you know you are an electronics geek when you get home from the swimming pool, have water in your ears, and look at the solder sucker with a guilty curiosity.

With the effected ear toward the floor, simply pressing on the outside of the ear with the palm of the hand will usually clear water in the ear.

The recommend outpatient device for ear care is a pediatric bulb syringe. Anything more aggressive risks tympanic membrane damage.