[ale] [OT] Soldering

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 5 Jul 2018 15:08:54 -0400
DJ-Pfulio via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> I learned in high school.
> 
> Heat the metal/joint, not the solder.  

Yes, except that you need enough fresh liquid solder on the solder tip
to *quickly* heat up the lead and hole, so you can get in and get out
quick. A too dry tip is slow to transfer heat.

> The solder will be "sucked"
> into the hot connector. Avoid overheating components. They will fry.
> NEVER touch the solder to the iron.

Never touching the solder directly to the iron is a goal we all have,
but sometimes, with a small lead and a small pad, things work better
when the solder goes right between the surfaces to be soldered and the
solder iron tip.

To minimize the necessity of the preceding, use very skinny solder.

One more thing: For gosh sakes, use a regulated solder iron, even if it
costs $200 (you can get them a lot cheaper). Unregulated irons oxidize
their tips quickly, leading to overly long solders and bad solder
joints.

This information comes from my six year audio repair career, during
which time I performed 40 to 100 solder joints per day, on single sided
boards with discrete components. I'd imagine that with multilayer
boards and tiny (or even surfacemount) components, techniques have
become even more demanding.

Steve Litt
Author: The Key to Everyday Excellence
http://www.troubleshooters.com/key
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt