How to Solder - Basic Soldering Guide

Soldering is process of joining two metals together with soldering iron by the use of a solder to form a dependable electrical joint.

This is a basic soldering guide for beginners about hand soldering with a soldering iron. I hope that it will be good help for most of your DIY projects from electronics. If you are experienced in soldering, your comments are welcome in "comments" area.
In this instructable I will cover the following topics:

- safety precautions before we start soldering operation

-choosing appropriate soldering iron and solder

- preparing for soldering

-soldering

-inspection of solder joints

Step 1:

Most of solder wires or solder paste contain lead (solder alloy is mixture of tin and lead). During soldering operation lead may produce fumes that are dangerous for your health. In addition, soldering wire usually has a flux in the middle of wire. There are different types of cored solder with different solder to flux rate. Flux containing rosin (colophony) produces solder fumes that, if inhaled, can be hazardous.

• Soldering should be performed only in a well-ventilated area.
• Use smoke absorber
• Soldering iron is very HOT (for most of soldering operation temperature of iron is 350 -400 degrees Celsius). Never touch tip of the soldering iron with your hand.
• Never leave your hot iron down on anything other than an iron stand.
• Keep flammable liquids and materials (such as alcohol, solvent etc.) away from the work area.
• Wear eye protection.
• Do not cut off a grounding prong on an iron plug to make it fit an ungrounded receptacle.
• Hold wires to be heated with tweezers, pliers or clamps to avoid receiving burns on your fingers from objects that are heated.
• Wear ESD (Electro-Static Discharge) protection if you are going to solder electro-static sensitive components such as CMOS components. For most of DIY projects it will be good enough to wear ESD wrist straps (shown on the picture below).
• Wash your hands with soap and water after soldering.

Comments

[mkarvonen]

you should also add that after cutting the left over from the component you should heat the solder joint once more to prevent the solder from fractioning in use or over time. also if possible the component for soldering should have straight legs, not bent ones like in the pictures. but good guide! (remember anyone! when you solder something, do it right so it will last. if possible do a medical and military crade soldering.)

[soldering iron]

Thank you for your comment and suggestions. I agree that component for soldering should have straight legs and that is shown on image in step 4. Component for soldering in that image has a straight leg but there is also solder wire touching component leg and tip of soldering iron. This solder wire is very thin 0.020" (0.50 mm) so it looks like leg of another component. I understand from your comment that this is a little bit confusing and thank you for pointing at this.

[DIVYA GARG]

very nice...........information............

[Siddharth Jain]

indeed a helpful one!!!....

[DoctorDv]

Very helpful, Thanks for the grerat post!