Introduction: How to Solder: Tips and Tricks

By Mitchell Martella

Step 1: Gather Your Materials and Set Up the Helping Hands

Before soldering it is essential that you gather all of your materials for your task at hand. This includes the soldering machine, solder, fan, item your working on, and the helping hands. Helping hands are a tool that allow you to position what your soldering in any way so that you have two free hands to use. These pair of hands have two crab like holders and a magnifying glass. These hands help a lot with balancing your item and make soldering much easier.

Step 2: Soldering Machine.

You must plug inch our soldering machine and turn the heatness up. How hot the machine has to be depends on what your working on but it usually akes a couple of minutes to get hot. Make sure you do not touch any part of the metal or you could severely burn yourself instantly. This is the main tool for soldering along with the solder

Step 3: Solder

The solder is used for when you solder. By touching the end of the solder and the soldering machines metal together, it crests a Hershey kiss like shape that connects what you are soldering. Make sure when you solder you do not crate a cold joint. A cold joint is when you solder part of it, but it is not connected all the way. You can see a cold joint by if your joint is still moving after solder has been applied. If this happens you must re- solder.

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Step 4: Fan

You must use a fan while soldering. Instead of blowing out air, this machine sucks it in in so that the smoke released by the solder machine is captured and makes the people at the table safer. It is bad to inhale the fumes let out while soldering, and this fan captures the fumes.

Step 5: The Claw

After you solder your metal in the right place, you must use the claw to clip the end pieces of the metal. Usually, after soldering you can attach your object to something else ( for example the playstation controller ). If you do not clip the end pieces it will not fit.

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Step 6: Tips

One tip that helps while soldering is using the magnifying glass. By using this and the helping hands, you have to free hands for use and the magnifying glass makes everything much clearer and easier to see.

Step 7: Tips

Another tip would be to avoid soldering too much on one spot. If you do this you can end up connecting to soldering joints which is bad and will most likely make it so the device doesn't end up working.

Step 8: Tips

If your having trouble creating a solder, put the end of the led onto the sphere part of the soldering machine. This creates a perfect circle that makes it a lot easier to solder on right away. The circle will move to the end of the solder, then all you have to do is solder normally. The only difference is that it will be created much more efficiently.

Step 9: Tips

Make sure to read the directions carefully because it is very easy to skip by one and out a soldering joint in the wrong way. It is very hard to undue a joint and flip it around.

Step 10: Final Tip.

If you are using the helping hands, but the un soldered joint is not in place - flip the helping hands around so that gravity allows the joint to stay in place. Once you solder one side in, you can flip it backpack to the upright position and do the other side. This helps keep the joint stable and even though makes it harder and trickier to solder, the end prize is the best feeling!

Step 11: Avoid

Avoid having two connect solders together. This can happen with poor soldering or just simply not paying attention. When this happens you must re solder and make a gap in between the joints. If you leave them connected, the item you are working on might not work

Step 12: Avoid

Avoid burning yourself. You can burn yourself by touching any part of the metal on the soldering machine. By touching this, you will severely burn your skin and will have a lot of pain as an outcome. Make sure to stay on task and avoid touching the metal.

Step 13: Avoid

Avoid having short led. Using a comfortable length for led helps because it gives you more control of the solder and creates a better soldering joint. This also helps with burning yourself because the longer the solder the harder it is to touch your hand and burn yourself.

Step 14: Avoid

Avoid putting the soldering joint in the wrong direction. If you do this, you must unsolder everything which can take a very long time. By leaving a soldered joint in the wrong direction, your whole project can be ruined.

Step 15: Avoid FINAL.

Avoid using the wrong joints in the wrong locations while soldering because your device will not end up working. Make sure to read your directions carefully and use pictures to see where each joint comes into play.