Lasercut Stretchy Conductive Fabric Traces

Step 5 Soldering on the washable components

The fabric is metal coated polyester, so if we heat it for too long, the polyester part will burn. To avoid this, try to get an adjustable soldering iron and use low-temperature solder, and solder the components as quickly as possible. Brush flux onto the places where you are going to solder. Pre-tin the components by adding solder to them before you connect them to the trace. Then touch the soldering iron to the component and the trace on the fabric as quickly as possible.

After you solder the component onto the end, it is best to reinforce the mechanical connection by ironing on another heavy piece of fabric with some wonder under. Then you can glue the component down with some rhinestone glue (like Gem-tac).

Another way to do this is to create rings at the ends of the lead of your components and to sew them in with conductive thread. This is more laborious, and with my sewing skills less durable.