What began as simple repairs evolved into a genuine fascination with electronics, pushing me to tackle increasingly complex fixes and understand not just how to solder and repair things, but how they actually work on the lowest level.

Soldering Gear

soldering projects

pro tips

  • rows of standing capacitors: invert per row to avoid having leads touch each other
  • flat mounting: solder 1 pin, then hold flush. Push and reheat to make sure component is flat
  • don’t grab components with tweezers too deep, you risk having your tweezer leads make contact with the board instead of the component

desoldering

  • add fresh solder to existing joints
    • preferably low melt / leaded solder to lower the melting temperature of existing joints
    • even lead free solder helps, as the fresh solder will increase the heat around the existing joints
  • add flux and reflow
  • hot air / solder pump per joint
  • when desoldering with wick, use higher temperatures (e.g. 400°) because wick increases the mass that needs to be heated

typical soldering 101 subjects

  • install headers
  • splice cables connectors
  • solder a breadboard