While soldering is not that hard, different tasks require different tools. Most of them can be from very cheap to very expensive. As a beginner I'd recommend the following:
A small USB-C soldering iron supported by IronOS[1], e.g. Pinecil vor TS100
A solid stand with brass wool
A KU soldering tip (looks a bit like a knife) for good heat transfer, too small tips are not good
Thin (<=0.5mm) solder wire
No clean flux (not a pen)
Isopropyl alcohol
Solder fume extractor (DIY is OK, if you're building it right) is good for your health
Solder mat (blue silicone)
Multimeter (not too cheap, around 20 bucks)
Self closing tweezers
Normal tweezers
A wirecutter (blue 5 bucks from ali express)
Manual Desoldering pump (engineer ss03 or a clone for cheaper)
Most important is cleaning (alcohol, then flux) and heat transfer (tin your tip, your pads or your wire before putting things together to ensure good heat transfer). Cleanup nicely and tin your tip after soldering to prevent corrosion.
Optional but helpful for more professional tasks:
Hot air station
Auto Desoldering pump (ZD-8965)
Adjustable power supply (fnirsi usbc, 30 bucks)
Oscilloscope (mini beginner with display Cost around 30 bucks)
Maybe a bit over the top for a lot of situations. I assume folks would acquire these things over a long period of time depending on their projects or what they are repairing. I have a 2-ch function generator coming because after 20 years of bodging stuff together and fixing minor things, I am tired of using the super cheapo one I got back in the day. It takes a while to amass all that crap, but it's fun.
A couple other thoughts: used hemostats are super helpful for a lot of things. for a lot of years I avoided getting any kind of "3rd hand" because I would use combinations of hemostats.
Or jigs- I have a very old piece of wood that has hole drilled for m and f XLR and 1/4 audio connectors with notes about which pin is which. Making tools like that is quite satisfying.
I really enjoy having a stack of stainless steel condiment cups to put screw in- I stack them up during a disassembly and then unstack them as I reassemble.
Also I will say that while I thought building one of those cheap-o oscilloscope kits was a pretty fun practice and I can recommend that, I don't fine them easy enough to use for beginners... the 2-ch Rigol scope I got was not super expensive and felt like the cheapest thing I'd be recommending to folks.
Finally, I have had a lot of mixed successes with desoldering pumps. It took me a long time to figure out that I can only get desoldering braid to work if I put liquid flux on it, but that made it a lot cleaner for me than the solder suckers.
C245 clones seem to be the new current standard tip format, they're pretty nice.
Not supported by any open third party firmware usually, but that's fine with me.
One thing to watch out for is tip grounding, some cheap irons leak a few volts at micro to milliamp level power, relative to ground, which could matter if you solder very sensitive things that are grounded, which you probably don't.
DIY fume extractors are hard to do, you need powerful fans unless you have an arm to put the extractor right above the iron. Also remember that when it's just sitting in the stand, it will still smoke for a few seconds, so the extractor must cover that too.
Those thin wispy activated carbon pads probably aren't doing much, you need actual particulate filtering like a HEPA or similar, but almost anything is better than having the smoke directly in your face with no fans.
and breathing flux is a far larger concern than leaded solder. Physically getting them somewhere (eating while soldering, not washing hands, etc) is still a problem.
Get your self a microscope stand, digital from AliExpress. The 7" screen ones are quite cheap and being able to see up close what you're doing makes all the difference in the world.
Oh I forgot... a big magnifier glass (8x to 15x) with an LED light is way cheaper than a microscope and very helpful for small parts soldering (SMD) :-)
I've got one as well, and I'll say it's extremely nice for removing splinters. I do a bit of woodworking, so it ends up being unexpectedly dual-purpose.
I will say it's important that the soldering iron be temperature controlled. It's especially nice if it's one with the temperature sensing integrated into the tip in a cartridge (like the ones you suggested).
Also, 63/37 tin/lead "eutectic" solder is the easiest to use. Wash your hands after using it, or wear gloves. 60/40 solder is almost as easy, and cheaper. Lead-free is more difficult, especially for learning. Learn with lead solder, then switch to lead-free.
I think there's no real need to learn with leaded anymore now that we have temp controlled irons and better fluxes and such.
Wearing gloves and washing your hands five million times is more annoying than just using lead free.
And even with perfect precautions, the flux expands and makes it spit tiny little balls, which then contaminates your whole work area with a somewhat fine dust.
Flux can be hazardous too, even if your solder is lead-free.
But in a non-occupational exposure setting you're not likely to have issues if you solder occasionally even with lead solder and don't take any precautions.
You don't need any real educational resources to get good at soldering. Any random primer will do. It's genuinely a simple task that doesn't require a lot of explanation or have a lot of tricks.
What gets you good at soldering is just practice. Solder a lot. A fun and easy way to do this is to pick up those cheap ($5 or less) electronic solder-it-yourself kits and do a bunch of them. Include ones that contain small surface mount parts.
You can also practice desoldering on them, or pick up broken electronics and desolder parts from those.
> managed to desolder and resolder a stick but the controller doesn't turn on anymore.
There's a chance to practice repair (which is a completely different topic from soldering)! Odds are very high the problem is that you've made an unwanted solder bridge or you have a cold solder joint.
> repair (which is a completely different topic from soldering)
Yes. There's repair, rework, build and debugging.
Repair is mostly diagnosis, followed by cleaning and repair of mechanical damage. ICs themselves don't fail much. That's what the original poster is doing.
Rework is mostly careful desoldering followed by new component installation. That's when hot-air rework stations are needed, if you have to replace ICs. This is a "use the right tool for the job" task, where you have little metal heat gun air guides for each IC shape. (I have a bag of those things.)
Building, where you start with a blank board and a supply of components, all with a known-to-work design, is just small scale manufacturing. It takes some skill and training, but the process is simple and repetitive. It's automated in production shops.
Debugging of new board designs requires not just soldering tools but the test equipment to test the thing and an understanding of how it works. This is what electrical engineers and technicians do.
Seconding the practice-kit thing, but for the dead DS4 specifically: before you go hunting the joint you reworked, check whether you lifted a pad or cooked a via near the stick. On those boards the stick pins sit right next to thin traces and a hot iron parked too long will pull the pad up with the pin. Easiest check is continuity from each stick pin to wherever the trace lands, and check 3.3V is present with it plugged in - if the rail is gone you probably bridged something, not broken the stick.
Other thing that got me: no-clean flux residue plus a cheap iron with a bad ground can look like a dead board when it's just leakage. Clean it with IPA and a brush and retest before desoldering anything else.
My late friend Ward was a strong supporter of Build-a-Blinkie[1] and their mission to teach people to solder by doing.
My friend Jim's been soldering since the 1950s. We solder a lot of things with leads, for this, his method is to get each item to be joined tinned, then use solder as a mechanical joint. Melt in the solder, remove the iron but hold them together, then once cool, tug on the joint to make sure it holds.
You don't need to spend a lot of money so I'll keep it simple:
Get yourself a few kits of SMD soldering components and practice. Amazon, AliExpress, whatever.
Some notes on technique:
You will be surprised at the tip size that works well - usually slightly larger is actually better, just need to get comfortable with the angle and size.
Have a magnifying lamp or something like that to help you see better.
You should always use alcohol (70-99% IPA) and flux. Clean everything properly, then flux it, then solder it. Then clean after you're done. Have a few flux pens on hand. MG Chemicals sells these things. You can also get the bottle version and some empty bottles with syringes that mount on top.
Using a "shoe" iron tip is nice because you can angle it between the lead of the component (through-hole) and the pad, and this gives you a little entry way for your solder to flow. The flowing, hot solder will then naturally heat up the rest of the pad. This is a thermal mass effect.
The alternative of having the iron tip on one side of the lead, and the solder wire on the other is not bad either. This makes the solder "flow" across the pad, but it does mean you don't get the thermal mass effect of the first approach. You may need to do this in tighter spaces. Regulate temperature wisely.
For through-hole components, most often the hole itself is plated so it is a double-sided pad, give it an extra 0.5-1s for the solder to go to the other side appropriately.
Make sure you have small wire cutters and nose pliers. The nose pliers are very handy when you need to shape the leads of transistors or chips that have 4-5 legs exactly to the through-hole positioning. Not usual, but not uncommon to see staggered layout.
You will make mistakes. You won't know what you are doing because no amount of tutorials can help here. We have all busted boards for various reasons. Just don't electrocute yourself on high voltage capacitor banks.
With the correct tools and materials soldering can be very easy or with the wrong tools very difficult!
There are probably some great videos on soldering on YouTube, luckily it's a mature field so not much has changed!
Some random tips...
Lead solder is easier to work with, but with lead free make sure you are using the right flux and temperature.
It helps to preheat things as much as you can. You want to have a hot pad and hot lead, then add solder to that. As opposed to putting a blob of solder on the iron and trying to apply it like glue.
Too much heat can damage the board or part of course.
Use the right tips. Fatter tips can help more evenly apply heat.
If there is a lot of copper like a ground plane, it can take longer to heat.
Watch for cold joints!
Just overall think about getting the parts you want solder on hot, touch solder to it, remove heat.
The important thing with lead free is you're not looking for the color or texture when inspecting, you're looking for the shape, and absence of any tiny seam or cracks.
It's probably not gonna be 100% shiny, that's fine, it just has to wet effectively instead of just kind of hovering in a blob.
Lead free is the only thing I use unless I'm repairing some old pre rohs era thing I guess, but I generally don't encounter many of those.
I'll also echo the "practice kit" thing, especially for desoldering- solder stuff on, take it off, do it agin.
Also, good tools and supplies- kester solder and liquid flux.
It took me quite a while to figure out that my preferences are for desoldering braid that's been soaked with liquid flux- if I use a manual pump it's going to be rough. I am hoping to get a hot air station at some point but I haven't been doing enough work to justify it over my ancient hakko.
If you need to remove components with many pads, like connectors, it can be daunting without Low Temp Solder Wire. Chip Quik.
Btw, I use acetone for cleaning PCBA's, and actually almost every day, and right now, in a professional R&D lab. Residues of soldering wire, after SMT component removal, before new component gets in - it goes away with cotton bud soaked in ace in a few strokes. Never destroyed anything in my whole professional life, 35+ years now, working in consumer and industrial PCBA repair service. Isopropyl works of course, but slowly, and not so clean pcb stays. Depending on the type of soldering wire. I never use lead-free for repairs.
During soldering though hole, you need few seconds to heat up the pcb copper and a component lead. They should be on on the same temp for second or two when solder gets melted around. You can even see pad hole capillary sucking melted solder.
I've seen young people soldering THT, by shortly touching component pin and and a pcb pad. This looks baad.
Get a soldering practice kit. If you're doing surface mount, get a SMD one. For next level practice, checkout azonenberg's rework challenge: https://github.com/azonenberg/reworkctf. He also has some YouTube video about it.
Right. Search "surface mount soldering practice kit". For about $4, you get a board and some parts to practice on. Get a few of those kits, and keep doing them until the result looks really good. I went through about three of those before I attempted anything real.
You really do need all those little tools, plus a good soldering station, and possibly a hot-air rework station. Get a smoke extractor fan. Learn to use lead-free solder with a small silver component. That gets the melting point down. Visit a place that repairs cell phones and see what they have.
If you live near a makerspace / hackerspace, I would definitely recommend doing projects there. Mine has a weekly electronics projects and repair night with free access. This has two main benefits:
1. Access to a bunch of different equipment without breaking the bank. Want to try out a bunch of different kinds of flux? See what kind of de-soldering tools are good for different tasks? Now you can!
2. Access to expertise and moral support. Trying to do everything by yourself is no fun. A YouTube video can be helpful but it's no substitute for a knowledgeable friend or more experienced mentor.
I recently did an RTC battery substitution on my Framework laptop's mainboard, and I could do it with confidence because I had good tools and people to consult at my makerspace.
For me, as there are so many "variables" when soldering, the most difficult thing is knowing what's wrong.
For example, you end up with a poor soldering. You try again, and again, but it doesn't get better. Maybe only worse. But what was wrong?
- Was the temperature OK? (And is my iron reporting the real temperature? Should I spend another 300 bucks in a soldering tip thermometer?)
- Maybe the solder I bought is not appropriate?
- Was it the flux? Did I apply it correctly?
- Also, is this tip the best one for the job? Besides, I could have damaged it before when trying to solder and it's not good anymore, although looks good to me
- Or my technique isn't good enough. Am I drag soldering this right? Maybe I should apply heat for longer? But what if I damage the component?
The things you want to solder need to be at a minimum temperature for the solder to properly flow.
Parts with a lot of metal attached to it will need more time to get hot. Most notorious are pads connected to a large (ground) plane.
If the solder does not flow properly because of this, increase the time of contact between your soldering iron and the items, add a small amount of solder to the tip to increase contact area. Or use a heat gun in your other hand or a preheater. Or buy a soldering iron with more power.
Flux will help too.
Use a fan to draw the fumes away from you, at a minimum. If you do this on a daily basis, get a fume extractor.
There are many more tips on the internet. The first thing I mentioned is the most important one, imho.
I picked up the skill from my granddad when I was a kid. Yeah, 6 year old with a soldering iron, what could go wrong, right? Welcome to eastern Europe. There are really 2 things: good soldering iron(and soldering helping hands kit) and practice. Which takes me to one of my hobbies: drones. Look up a kit called Diatone Mamba soldering practice board. They cost 2-3 bucks, get 10 and you'll get the hang of it in a few hours. Oh and a fume extractor(any old pc fan will do).
The only way to learn is to do the damn thing. You'll eventually figure it out. Tinker around with projects that don't matter but are still rewarding. Like, commit a 555 timer and blinky LEDs to proto board. Then find some kits on tindie that seem interesting but won't break the bank. Wash, rinse, repeat until you're building your own multiprocessor homebrew 6502 computer.
You can buy a whole lot of practise kits on Amazon. Start with push-through components and move on to surface-mount if you fancy that.
I'd recommend checking out one of the many youtube channels who do repairs for an idea of the tools and stuff you need. Many have links and most use similar tools.
For $300 in tools from AliExpress you can have a pretty complete setup.
I took a local class that really helped but the lesson was really just a basic project that had like 40 solder points. First few barely stuck, last few looked perfect. Just do it over and over and you'll get better pretty quickly.
FYI you're trying to repair surface-mounted components by hand, that's pretty tricky. Most hand soldering is done with through hole components, not surface mounted. Not to say it can't be done, but you're starting on hard mode for sure.
I've taught people to start with surface mount before. It's really worse depending on what you're soldering. A lot of people doing hardware hacking will get tons of mileage just out of being able to solder on a chip with a soic-8 package. That's easy enough that you can learn it on day 1.
For teens ages 13-18, Hack Club is running a free grant program to help kids learn to solder! They can sign up and get a free kit from us at https://solder.hackclub.com/
Is there a local makerspace? They often will have free nights where you can pick up some knowledge with direct supervision. Having someone else watch you is incredibly helpful.
The variables aren't that hard to learn. The one thing many beginners struggle with is that they don't really get the principles involved. They treat a soldering iron as some sort of heated paint brush and wonder why they can't get the paint off the brush.
In reality there are multiple factors at play, but a simple and useful abstraction is to think about solder as something that flows more easily to places that are hot. That means the solder always likes to go onto the iron, since that is likely the hottest thing around.
This means your first goal is simply to heat up the places you want to solder far enough so they can melt the solder if you touch them with the solder wire¹.
This usually means heating two things at once: be it two wires you solder together or a pad and the leg of a resistor. That means knowing the geometry of your tip well is useful: How to wedge it in to heat the two things at once. Typically only the shiny, plated bits of the tip are really good at conducting heat². A little drop of solder on the iron can help conduct the heat to a bigger surface, a bit like the fat in a frying pan.
But generally you heat the parts with the iron and then you feed the solder wire into the parts. If they are hot e ough, the solder melts. If not, you wait.
The solder wire typically has a resin-like fluid inside, that helps with soldering as it reduces the surface tension of the metal (this is most of the stuff in the fumes). Capillary effect is the main thing that makes solder flow where you want it to. When the flux is evaporated soldering gets harder, so you may need to add fresh solder after a while or you use flux from a dispenser that you add manually.³
Then there is a lot about logistics. Heated air travels up, on earth solder tends to be affected by gravity and has a tendency to go down (although capillary effects are really the dominant force here), gravity affects parts, wires bend where their material wanta them to etc. The logistics part means: you have only two hands, an iron, solder wire and typically two or more parts that need to be joined.
Being good at soldering is (1) having a good mental model and intuition about how and why the solder flows the way it does and (2) have skill and experience to get the logistics right. The first you can learn to understand, the latter is a matter of practise.⁴
I have thought soldering sucessfully to well over 400 people during the past decade.
¹ This means your iron and tip need to be able to deliver enough heat to heat the parts. If you try to heat up a 200W copper CPU cooler with a 14W soldering iron you can wait forever for the solder to melt. This also has to do with thermal mass and regulation of the iron. Modern irons with modern tips have the temperature probe inside the tip. This helps a ton with avoiding temperature dips when you start to touch something and makes soldering much easier.
² This means keeping tips clean with a proper cleaner literally before every solder joint is crucial. If your tip is toast and has no shiny bit anymore, clean it. If that doesn't help use Ersa Solder Tip Reactivator or buy a new tip. Of course your parts should also be clean (Isopropanol)
³ There are ways to remove excess solder. The simplest being using the right motion with the tip on a coldish joint, making the excess solder stick to the iron and not to the (colder) joint. Other things are spring loaded suction devices (very useful to get solder out of through holes!) and solder wick (very useful to clean old pads)
⁴ There a tools like third hands and so on, and watching some videos by experienced solderers is a good way (nowadays) to learn it, but a steady hand only comes with practise
While soldering is not that hard, different tasks require different tools. Most of them can be from very cheap to very expensive. As a beginner I'd recommend the following:
A small USB-C soldering iron supported by IronOS[1], e.g. Pinecil vor TS100
A solid stand with brass wool
A KU soldering tip (looks a bit like a knife) for good heat transfer, too small tips are not good
Thin (<=0.5mm) solder wire
No clean flux (not a pen)
Isopropyl alcohol
Solder fume extractor (DIY is OK, if you're building it right) is good for your health
Solder mat (blue silicone)
Multimeter (not too cheap, around 20 bucks)
Self closing tweezers
Normal tweezers
A wirecutter (blue 5 bucks from ali express)
Manual Desoldering pump (engineer ss03 or a clone for cheaper)
Most important is cleaning (alcohol, then flux) and heat transfer (tin your tip, your pads or your wire before putting things together to ensure good heat transfer). Cleanup nicely and tin your tip after soldering to prevent corrosion.
Optional but helpful for more professional tasks:
Hot air station
Auto Desoldering pump (ZD-8965)
Adjustable power supply (fnirsi usbc, 30 bucks)
Oscilloscope (mini beginner with display Cost around 30 bucks)
Capton tape
Solid Copper wire
1: https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS
Nice list.
Maybe a bit over the top for a lot of situations. I assume folks would acquire these things over a long period of time depending on their projects or what they are repairing. I have a 2-ch function generator coming because after 20 years of bodging stuff together and fixing minor things, I am tired of using the super cheapo one I got back in the day. It takes a while to amass all that crap, but it's fun.
A couple other thoughts: used hemostats are super helpful for a lot of things. for a lot of years I avoided getting any kind of "3rd hand" because I would use combinations of hemostats.
Or jigs- I have a very old piece of wood that has hole drilled for m and f XLR and 1/4 audio connectors with notes about which pin is which. Making tools like that is quite satisfying.
I really enjoy having a stack of stainless steel condiment cups to put screw in- I stack them up during a disassembly and then unstack them as I reassemble.
Also I will say that while I thought building one of those cheap-o oscilloscope kits was a pretty fun practice and I can recommend that, I don't fine them easy enough to use for beginners... the 2-ch Rigol scope I got was not super expensive and felt like the cheapest thing I'd be recommending to folks.
Finally, I have had a lot of mixed successes with desoldering pumps. It took me a long time to figure out that I can only get desoldering braid to work if I put liquid flux on it, but that made it a lot cleaner for me than the solder suckers.
C245 clones seem to be the new current standard tip format, they're pretty nice.
Not supported by any open third party firmware usually, but that's fine with me.
One thing to watch out for is tip grounding, some cheap irons leak a few volts at micro to milliamp level power, relative to ground, which could matter if you solder very sensitive things that are grounded, which you probably don't.
DIY fume extractors are hard to do, you need powerful fans unless you have an arm to put the extractor right above the iron. Also remember that when it's just sitting in the stand, it will still smoke for a few seconds, so the extractor must cover that too.
Those thin wispy activated carbon pads probably aren't doing much, you need actual particulate filtering like a HEPA or similar, but almost anything is better than having the smoke directly in your face with no fans.
and breathing flux is a far larger concern than leaded solder. Physically getting them somewhere (eating while soldering, not washing hands, etc) is still a problem.
Get your self a microscope stand, digital from AliExpress. The 7" screen ones are quite cheap and being able to see up close what you're doing makes all the difference in the world.
Oh I forgot... a big magnifier glass (8x to 15x) with an LED light is way cheaper than a microscope and very helpful for small parts soldering (SMD) :-)
I have a microscope, but once you get used to using hot air, you don't need it for soldering, just inspection.
A cheap clip-on macro lens for a phone camera is also good for inspecting things, without the cost+space of a proper microscope.
True but you can do actual work under a stereoscopic microscope. It has a vaunted place on my workbench.
Disclosure: Old person. ;-)
I've got one as well, and I'll say it's extremely nice for removing splinters. I do a bit of woodworking, so it ends up being unexpectedly dual-purpose.
Indeed, I'm the designated family surgeon. I've removed more splinters from people than I can count.
I have a $40 head-mounted thing with integrated light and it's awesome for modern boards.
I will say it's important that the soldering iron be temperature controlled. It's especially nice if it's one with the temperature sensing integrated into the tip in a cartridge (like the ones you suggested).
Also, 63/37 tin/lead "eutectic" solder is the easiest to use. Wash your hands after using it, or wear gloves. 60/40 solder is almost as easy, and cheaper. Lead-free is more difficult, especially for learning. Learn with lead solder, then switch to lead-free.
I think there's no real need to learn with leaded anymore now that we have temp controlled irons and better fluxes and such.
Wearing gloves and washing your hands five million times is more annoying than just using lead free.
And even with perfect precautions, the flux expands and makes it spit tiny little balls, which then contaminates your whole work area with a somewhat fine dust.
Flux can be hazardous too, even if your solder is lead-free.
But in a non-occupational exposure setting you're not likely to have issues if you solder occasionally even with lead solder and don't take any precautions.
> A wirecutter
Yes, but buy several. Maybe it's only because I buy cheap crap ones in the first place, but I treat them as consumables.
What are you using them for that consumes them?
Cutting wires, mostly.
This is just a great starter list. Thank you
>Capton tape
Kapton tape
You don't need any real educational resources to get good at soldering. Any random primer will do. It's genuinely a simple task that doesn't require a lot of explanation or have a lot of tricks.
What gets you good at soldering is just practice. Solder a lot. A fun and easy way to do this is to pick up those cheap ($5 or less) electronic solder-it-yourself kits and do a bunch of them. Include ones that contain small surface mount parts.
You can also practice desoldering on them, or pick up broken electronics and desolder parts from those.
> managed to desolder and resolder a stick but the controller doesn't turn on anymore.
There's a chance to practice repair (which is a completely different topic from soldering)! Odds are very high the problem is that you've made an unwanted solder bridge or you have a cold solder joint.
> repair (which is a completely different topic from soldering)
Yes. There's repair, rework, build and debugging.
Repair is mostly diagnosis, followed by cleaning and repair of mechanical damage. ICs themselves don't fail much. That's what the original poster is doing.
Rework is mostly careful desoldering followed by new component installation. That's when hot-air rework stations are needed, if you have to replace ICs. This is a "use the right tool for the job" task, where you have little metal heat gun air guides for each IC shape. (I have a bag of those things.)
Building, where you start with a blank board and a supply of components, all with a known-to-work design, is just small scale manufacturing. It takes some skill and training, but the process is simple and repetitive. It's automated in production shops.
Debugging of new board designs requires not just soldering tools but the test equipment to test the thing and an understanding of how it works. This is what electrical engineers and technicians do.
I find watching videos of other people soldering is almost as good as practicing myself.
I get frustrated watching soldering videos online because there are a lot of videos online of people who are really bad at soldering.
Or both.
Seconding the practice-kit thing, but for the dead DS4 specifically: before you go hunting the joint you reworked, check whether you lifted a pad or cooked a via near the stick. On those boards the stick pins sit right next to thin traces and a hot iron parked too long will pull the pad up with the pin. Easiest check is continuity from each stick pin to wherever the trace lands, and check 3.3V is present with it plugged in - if the rail is gone you probably bridged something, not broken the stick.
Other thing that got me: no-clean flux residue plus a cheap iron with a bad ground can look like a dead board when it's just leakage. Clean it with IPA and a brush and retest before desoldering anything else.
Arguably, the only resource you need to get better at it, is time.
Every next solder makes you better at soldering.
Get through your first 1000 solders as soon as possible, and then keep going. The rest will figure itself out along the way.
NAVAIR 01-1A-23
https://www.robins.af.mil/Portals/59/documents/technicalorde...
I was a 2M Mini/Micro repair technician for a few years in the Navy. That book was our school and manual.
My late friend Ward was a strong supporter of Build-a-Blinkie[1] and their mission to teach people to solder by doing.
My friend Jim's been soldering since the 1950s. We solder a lot of things with leads, for this, his method is to get each item to be joined tinned, then use solder as a mechanical joint. Melt in the solder, remove the iron but hold them together, then once cool, tug on the joint to make sure it holds.
[1] https://build-a-blinkie.org/events.php
I highly recommend a desoldering gun, like a Hakko, absolutely life changing if you take stuff apart or repair often.
Also, flux is your friend.
Hi tosmatos,
Please have a look at PACE soldering/desoldering videos on youtube. They are dated but very good in general. You don't need a lot of videos, just the basics. https://paceworldwide.com/video/basic-soldering-lesson-1-sol...
You don't need to spend a lot of money so I'll keep it simple:
Get yourself a few kits of SMD soldering components and practice. Amazon, AliExpress, whatever.
Some notes on technique:
You will be surprised at the tip size that works well - usually slightly larger is actually better, just need to get comfortable with the angle and size.
Have a magnifying lamp or something like that to help you see better.
You should always use alcohol (70-99% IPA) and flux. Clean everything properly, then flux it, then solder it. Then clean after you're done. Have a few flux pens on hand. MG Chemicals sells these things. You can also get the bottle version and some empty bottles with syringes that mount on top.
Using a "shoe" iron tip is nice because you can angle it between the lead of the component (through-hole) and the pad, and this gives you a little entry way for your solder to flow. The flowing, hot solder will then naturally heat up the rest of the pad. This is a thermal mass effect.
The alternative of having the iron tip on one side of the lead, and the solder wire on the other is not bad either. This makes the solder "flow" across the pad, but it does mean you don't get the thermal mass effect of the first approach. You may need to do this in tighter spaces. Regulate temperature wisely.
For through-hole components, most often the hole itself is plated so it is a double-sided pad, give it an extra 0.5-1s for the solder to go to the other side appropriately.
Make sure you have small wire cutters and nose pliers. The nose pliers are very handy when you need to shape the leads of transistors or chips that have 4-5 legs exactly to the through-hole positioning. Not usual, but not uncommon to see staggered layout.
You will make mistakes. You won't know what you are doing because no amount of tutorials can help here. We have all busted boards for various reasons. Just don't electrocute yourself on high voltage capacitor banks.
With the correct tools and materials soldering can be very easy or with the wrong tools very difficult!
There are probably some great videos on soldering on YouTube, luckily it's a mature field so not much has changed!
Some random tips...
Lead solder is easier to work with, but with lead free make sure you are using the right flux and temperature.
It helps to preheat things as much as you can. You want to have a hot pad and hot lead, then add solder to that. As opposed to putting a blob of solder on the iron and trying to apply it like glue.
Too much heat can damage the board or part of course.
Use the right tips. Fatter tips can help more evenly apply heat.
If there is a lot of copper like a ground plane, it can take longer to heat.
Watch for cold joints!
Just overall think about getting the parts you want solder on hot, touch solder to it, remove heat.
Don't eat it!
The important thing with lead free is you're not looking for the color or texture when inspecting, you're looking for the shape, and absence of any tiny seam or cracks.
It's probably not gonna be 100% shiny, that's fine, it just has to wet effectively instead of just kind of hovering in a blob.
Lead free is the only thing I use unless I'm repairing some old pre rohs era thing I guess, but I generally don't encounter many of those.
I'll also echo the "practice kit" thing, especially for desoldering- solder stuff on, take it off, do it agin.
Also, good tools and supplies- kester solder and liquid flux.
It took me quite a while to figure out that my preferences are for desoldering braid that's been soaked with liquid flux- if I use a manual pump it's going to be rough. I am hoping to get a hot air station at some point but I haven't been doing enough work to justify it over my ancient hakko.
If you need to remove components with many pads, like connectors, it can be daunting without Low Temp Solder Wire. Chip Quik. Btw, I use acetone for cleaning PCBA's, and actually almost every day, and right now, in a professional R&D lab. Residues of soldering wire, after SMT component removal, before new component gets in - it goes away with cotton bud soaked in ace in a few strokes. Never destroyed anything in my whole professional life, 35+ years now, working in consumer and industrial PCBA repair service. Isopropyl works of course, but slowly, and not so clean pcb stays. Depending on the type of soldering wire. I never use lead-free for repairs. During soldering though hole, you need few seconds to heat up the pcb copper and a component lead. They should be on on the same temp for second or two when solder gets melted around. You can even see pad hole capillary sucking melted solder. I've seen young people soldering THT, by shortly touching component pin and and a pcb pad. This looks baad.
Get a soldering practice kit. If you're doing surface mount, get a SMD one. For next level practice, checkout azonenberg's rework challenge: https://github.com/azonenberg/reworkctf. He also has some YouTube video about it.
Right. Search "surface mount soldering practice kit". For about $4, you get a board and some parts to practice on. Get a few of those kits, and keep doing them until the result looks really good. I went through about three of those before I attempted anything real.
You really do need all those little tools, plus a good soldering station, and possibly a hot-air rework station. Get a smoke extractor fan. Learn to use lead-free solder with a small silver component. That gets the melting point down. Visit a place that repairs cell phones and see what they have.
If you live near a makerspace / hackerspace, I would definitely recommend doing projects there. Mine has a weekly electronics projects and repair night with free access. This has two main benefits:
1. Access to a bunch of different equipment without breaking the bank. Want to try out a bunch of different kinds of flux? See what kind of de-soldering tools are good for different tasks? Now you can!
2. Access to expertise and moral support. Trying to do everything by yourself is no fun. A YouTube video can be helpful but it's no substitute for a knowledgeable friend or more experienced mentor.
I recently did an RTC battery substitution on my Framework laptop's mainboard, and I could do it with confidence because I had good tools and people to consult at my makerspace.
Here’s a great series from Pace Electronics from 1980:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL926EC0F1F93C1837&si=srD8...
I have not found a modern resource that explains it better.
For me, as there are so many "variables" when soldering, the most difficult thing is knowing what's wrong.
For example, you end up with a poor soldering. You try again, and again, but it doesn't get better. Maybe only worse. But what was wrong?
- Was the temperature OK? (And is my iron reporting the real temperature? Should I spend another 300 bucks in a soldering tip thermometer?)
- Maybe the solder I bought is not appropriate?
- Was it the flux? Did I apply it correctly?
- Also, is this tip the best one for the job? Besides, I could have damaged it before when trying to solder and it's not good anymore, although looks good to me
- Or my technique isn't good enough. Am I drag soldering this right? Maybe I should apply heat for longer? But what if I damage the component?
The main insight you need to have:
The things you want to solder need to be at a minimum temperature for the solder to properly flow.
Parts with a lot of metal attached to it will need more time to get hot. Most notorious are pads connected to a large (ground) plane.
If the solder does not flow properly because of this, increase the time of contact between your soldering iron and the items, add a small amount of solder to the tip to increase contact area. Or use a heat gun in your other hand or a preheater. Or buy a soldering iron with more power.
Flux will help too.
Use a fan to draw the fumes away from you, at a minimum. If you do this on a daily basis, get a fume extractor.
There are many more tips on the internet. The first thing I mentioned is the most important one, imho.
This gives me flashbacks to the last time I tried to replace the microswitches in my mouse...
After I finished, the right click felt like it was 'glued down' or 'stuck'...
I never heard the click sound again...
Yep, it was broken.
I've decided never to solder anything ever again...
But good luck to you!
you attempted a skilled technique without practice, you were surprised when you screwed it up, and then you quit
this is not a good pattern!
I picked up the skill from my granddad when I was a kid. Yeah, 6 year old with a soldering iron, what could go wrong, right? Welcome to eastern Europe. There are really 2 things: good soldering iron(and soldering helping hands kit) and practice. Which takes me to one of my hobbies: drones. Look up a kit called Diatone Mamba soldering practice board. They cost 2-3 bucks, get 10 and you'll get the hang of it in a few hours. Oh and a fume extractor(any old pc fan will do).
The only way to learn is to do the damn thing. You'll eventually figure it out. Tinker around with projects that don't matter but are still rewarding. Like, commit a 555 timer and blinky LEDs to proto board. Then find some kits on tindie that seem interesting but won't break the bank. Wash, rinse, repeat until you're building your own multiprocessor homebrew 6502 computer.
https://s3vi.ndc.nasa.gov/ssri-kb/static/resources/NASA%20St...
You can buy a whole lot of practise kits on Amazon. Start with push-through components and move on to surface-mount if you fancy that.
I'd recommend checking out one of the many youtube channels who do repairs for an idea of the tools and stuff you need. Many have links and most use similar tools.
For $300 in tools from AliExpress you can have a pretty complete setup.
I took a local class that really helped but the lesson was really just a basic project that had like 40 solder points. First few barely stuck, last few looked perfect. Just do it over and over and you'll get better pretty quickly.
FYI you're trying to repair surface-mounted components by hand, that's pretty tricky. Most hand soldering is done with through hole components, not surface mounted. Not to say it can't be done, but you're starting on hard mode for sure.
I've taught people to start with surface mount before. It's really worse depending on what you're soldering. A lot of people doing hardware hacking will get tons of mileage just out of being able to solder on a chip with a soic-8 package. That's easy enough that you can learn it on day 1.
This guy's youtube videos are, IMO, incredible: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw4EJfQf0KJXCyQ5qiNlcUg/vid...
For teens ages 13-18, Hack Club is running a free grant program to help kids learn to solder! They can sign up and get a free kit from us at https://solder.hackclub.com/
This guy does a lot of videos about what you're trying to do, and explains what he is doing and why: https://www.youtube.com/@JoeyDoesTech
Is there a local makerspace? They often will have free nights where you can pick up some knowledge with direct supervision. Having someone else watch you is incredibly helpful.
This set of videos from eevblog worked for me.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Sb21qbpEQ
Don't overthink it, seriously. Avoid the fumes, if the joint looks shiny, its probably cool.
Thanks for the tips everyone, I'm motivated now !
Are you one of those openAI swarms that got into the wild?
know that unleaded solder needs higher temps to melt and heat both the joint and the plate a little to have a good fix !
The variables aren't that hard to learn. The one thing many beginners struggle with is that they don't really get the principles involved. They treat a soldering iron as some sort of heated paint brush and wonder why they can't get the paint off the brush.
In reality there are multiple factors at play, but a simple and useful abstraction is to think about solder as something that flows more easily to places that are hot. That means the solder always likes to go onto the iron, since that is likely the hottest thing around.
This means your first goal is simply to heat up the places you want to solder far enough so they can melt the solder if you touch them with the solder wire¹.
This usually means heating two things at once: be it two wires you solder together or a pad and the leg of a resistor. That means knowing the geometry of your tip well is useful: How to wedge it in to heat the two things at once. Typically only the shiny, plated bits of the tip are really good at conducting heat². A little drop of solder on the iron can help conduct the heat to a bigger surface, a bit like the fat in a frying pan.
But generally you heat the parts with the iron and then you feed the solder wire into the parts. If they are hot e ough, the solder melts. If not, you wait.
The solder wire typically has a resin-like fluid inside, that helps with soldering as it reduces the surface tension of the metal (this is most of the stuff in the fumes). Capillary effect is the main thing that makes solder flow where you want it to. When the flux is evaporated soldering gets harder, so you may need to add fresh solder after a while or you use flux from a dispenser that you add manually.³
Then there is a lot about logistics. Heated air travels up, on earth solder tends to be affected by gravity and has a tendency to go down (although capillary effects are really the dominant force here), gravity affects parts, wires bend where their material wanta them to etc. The logistics part means: you have only two hands, an iron, solder wire and typically two or more parts that need to be joined.
Being good at soldering is (1) having a good mental model and intuition about how and why the solder flows the way it does and (2) have skill and experience to get the logistics right. The first you can learn to understand, the latter is a matter of practise.⁴
I have thought soldering sucessfully to well over 400 people during the past decade.
¹ This means your iron and tip need to be able to deliver enough heat to heat the parts. If you try to heat up a 200W copper CPU cooler with a 14W soldering iron you can wait forever for the solder to melt. This also has to do with thermal mass and regulation of the iron. Modern irons with modern tips have the temperature probe inside the tip. This helps a ton with avoiding temperature dips when you start to touch something and makes soldering much easier.
² This means keeping tips clean with a proper cleaner literally before every solder joint is crucial. If your tip is toast and has no shiny bit anymore, clean it. If that doesn't help use Ersa Solder Tip Reactivator or buy a new tip. Of course your parts should also be clean (Isopropanol)
³ There are ways to remove excess solder. The simplest being using the right motion with the tip on a coldish joint, making the excess solder stick to the iron and not to the (colder) joint. Other things are spring loaded suction devices (very useful to get solder out of through holes!) and solder wick (very useful to clean old pads)
⁴ There a tools like third hands and so on, and watching some videos by experienced solderers is a good way (nowadays) to learn it, but a steady hand only comes with practise