this is a video that i've wanted to make
for a long time a lot of the projects
that i show on this channel involve some
amount of soldering and i always try and
give some tips and advice for the type
of soldering that i'm doing in a
particular project but even so it can be
pretty intimidating if you've never
touched an iron before and i always see
some people in the comments saying that
they'd love to do these projects
but the soldering is what's holding them
back so with those people in mind today
i'm going to give a beginner's crash
course in soldering
and hopefully convince you that it's not
as scary or as difficult to learn the
basics as you might be thinking
okay so here's what i'm going to do in
this video first i'm going to go over
some basic
concepts and some common issues that i
see people running into as they're
learning how to do this
then i'll go over some basic techniques
for some different types of components
that you're likely to run
into as you get into this hobby then at
the end i'll give some advice for things
to look for in the soldering iron when
you're going to buy one
and some other tools that i'd recommend
to go along with it as usual check out
the link in the description for a blog
post
that's where i'll put links to any tools
or supplies that i'll mention also if
you have any questions or if you need
any help with anything
we've got a discord server and i'll link
to that below as well
okay so let's start with the very basics
soldering is when you
fuse together two electrical components
using a metal alloy called
solder and by the way yes i'm aware that
most other countries pronounce the l
in the word solder for whatever reason
we decided not to in the united states
wasn't my idea anyway that alloy comes
in several formulas that are made up of
metals like
tin or copper or lead personally what i
like using is 60 40
rosin core solder that means that it's
60 10 and 40
lead you can get it without lead but i
find that a little bit more difficult to
work with
so if you're using one that has lead in
it just make sure that you wash your
hands after you're done
it also comes in different diameters you
can get really thick or really thin
solder
personally i prefer thinner because it
makes it easier to fit inside pin holes
and it also makes it easier to control
how much you're applying
rosin core means that the center of the
solder is made up of
rosin flux flux is another important
component of soldering
it's used for cleaning metal surfaces
and removing oxidation
and just getting them ready to accept
solder and fuse with it there are a few
different types of this as well
some of them are very thin and basically
evaporate as you work with them
and some are thicker although those
thicker ones can leave a sticky residue
that is sometimes corrosive
so you'll want to clean that off with
some alcohol when you're done if you're
using rosin coarse solder then in most
situations
you won't have to worry about using
additional flux although you'll still
want to clean off that residue that the
rosin leaves behind
flex can be especially useful for
working with ribbon cables or
tiny pads on a pcb because it'll
facilitate better surface tension to
sort of pull it onto the metal pads
where you want it to go
now a couple of common mistakes that i
see people making when they're first
starting out
the first is that i'm trying to figure
out what these people are thinking i
think that the issue is a lot of people
seem to think that the goal with
soldering is to sort of
melt the solder onto whatever you're
trying to join together almost like
you're squeezing icing onto a cake or
something like that
that's not the case instead what you're
trying to do is heat up
both of the things that you're trying to
fuse together and then melt the solder
into
that might seem like a small distinction
but it is incredibly important
because if you do it the other way if
you just kind of dribble the solder onto
whatever you're working on
first of all it's going to be really
messy but you'll also run into what's
called a cold
solder joint that's where it might look
like the two things are connected
but it hasn't actually fused with one or
both of those surfaces
so you'll have an intermittent
connection at best or at worst
no connection at all the other issue
that i see constantly
the old saying less is more that
definitely applies to soldering you only
really want to use
just enough solder to make the
connection sometimes you'll have a good
reason to use a little bit more
for instance on the minty pie where the
l r button board connects to the power
board you should make those solder
joints a little bit bigger because
they're actually kind of physically
reinforcing that connection between the
two boards
but the vast majority of the time you
only want to use just enough to make
that connection if you use too much
solder then you run the risk of
bridging whatever you're connecting with
some neighboring components
that can be really bad to say the least
so i'll start with probably the easiest
type of component to work with which is
through-hole components you can find all
kinds of different components in this
form
like capacitors and resistors and leds
and they've got these
long legs that are meant to go all the
way through a circuit board you find
these a lot in commercially made boards
uh like these giant capacitors on this
printer controller board
for some of them you might have to bend
the legs to make them fit into the board
and i'm just using it with some
prototyping board here just to give an
example
slide it into the pinholes and then bend
the legs outward to hold it into place
use the tip of your soldering iron to
heat up both the pinhole
and the leg at the same time and then
feed a little bit of solder onto it
a good temperature to start at with
soldering by the way is between
300 and 325 degrees celsius
and that's it like i say really easy to
work with
and you can see that i hardly had to use
any solder at all
that's kind of a theme that you'll be
seeing here is only use as much solder
as you actually need
another type of through-hole soldering
that i've shown a few times on this
channel
is attaching header pins to some type of
board like this tiny arduino board from
adafruit
these make it so that you can stick it
into a breadboard which makes it really
easy to work with for prototyping
so the easiest way to attach these is to
put the header pins into the breadboard
so that you have everything
lined up and it'll also keep the legs
perpendicular with the board
and then just like in the other example
use the tip of your soldering iron to
heat up both the pinhole
and the pin and feed a little bit of
solder onto it for this one i'm using a
little bit more than i did on the
previous example
and that's because these are going to be
under a little bit of stress as you
insert it and remove it from the
breadboard
so you want to make sure that it's got a
nice solid connection i like to do one
on both sides
and then just go down the line and do
the rest and this is about what it
should look like when you're done
you'll notice that the solder extends
just a little bit up above the board
and makes kind of a cone shape and i
should probably go back and clean up all
the excess rosin from the solder on this
one
so next up let's talk about wire this is
the kind of wire that i like to use
it's coated in silicone so it's nice and
flexible
and it's not going to melt from your
soldering iron either it's also really
easy to strip you can do it with your
fingernail
and this is stranded core wire meaning
that it's made up of a bunch of
tiny individual strands of metal you can
also get
solid core wire which as the name
implies is made up of one
giant thick piece of copper in the
middle of the wire
i have only needed to use this a couple
of times it's much more difficult to
work with
99 of the time you're going to be using
stranded core wire
so the first thing that i want to show
you is tinning wires which is the
process of adding a little bit of solder
to it to make it much easier to connect
to other components to do this strip a
couple of millimeters of the wire
and then twist all of those strands
together nice and tight
then you're going to heat them up and
apply just a little bit of solder
just to coat them and hold them all
together
and that's it this is something that
you'll find yourself doing quite a bit
so it's a good thing to practice next
i'm going to show you how to splice
two pieces of wire together which is
again something that you'll probably
find yourself doing at some point in the
future
there are a few different techniques for
doing this but here's how i like to do
it
strip off about five millimeters of both
sides of the wire
twist the strands of wire together but
don't add any solder to it just yet
then after we're done we're going to
need something to cover up the exposed
wire
i like to use heat shrink tubing so take
a small piece of that and slide it over
one of the wires
obviously you want to do this before you
connect them together now take
both halves of the wire and twist them
together nice and tight
then just like with the tinning example
heat up the wires and apply a little bit
of solder
again as you can see i'm not going crazy
with the solder here just enough
to coat both the wires you might want to
trim it down just a little bit
and then you can fold the exposed wire
over so that it's parallel with the
wires
slide the heat shrink tubing onto the
exposed part heat it up and
that's it again this is probably
something that you're going to find
yourself
doing as you get into this hobby so it's
a good thing to practice sometimes you
need to connect wires to pin holes
like for example if you're connecting a
battery to this charging board
to do that first prep the pinhole by
heating it up from one side with the
soldering iron tip
and feed a little bit of solder down
into there
then you're going to want to twist and
tin the wire like i just showed you
then heat up the pin hole and slide the
wire in from the other side
now in this example here i actually
didn't feed quite enough solder down
into there
so i went back and added a little bit to
the back
this is about what it should look like
when it's done as you can see the hole
is completely filled
but it doesn't stick out very much at
all it's nice and smooth
also notice that i don't really have any
wire exposed on the top of the board
here i inserted the wires
all the way into the pinholes so that
there's no metal exposed and you can't
accidentally short something out
sometimes you need to attach wire to a
board that doesn't have pin holes so
you'll be attaching them directly
to pads on the board like with this
retro psu board from helder
really nice battery charging and boost
port so anyway i'm going to be attaching
a couple of wires
to these battery pads here to add a jst
connector to make it really easy to
connect and disconnect a battery
so first again strip a couple of
millimeters of the wire
twist it and tin it just like you've
seen me do now in a couple of examples
should look about like this when you're
done some types of wire like this you
need to be a little bit more careful
with
because they do melt unlike that
silicone coated wire that i was using
before
then heat up the pads that you need to
attach the wires to
and feed some solder onto the board
right at the tip of the soldering iron
this is about what it should look like
when you're done just a couple of nice
smooth bumps that stick up maybe a
millimeter or so then you can heat up
those blobs of solder
and just kind of insert the wire into
them
having them tinned beforehand makes it
so that they should just kind of get
absorbed into that blob of solder pretty
easily
notice that i only stripped as much wire
as i needed beyond
just keeping it nice and clean looking
that's really important so that you make
sure that you don't accidentally short
something out somewhere
another type of soldering that actually
i'm not sure if there's an actual term
for it but it's really popular with the
types of projects that you see on this
channel
for example with kite's circuit gym for
the sega dreamcast vmu shell
anyway you'll see pads on a board that
correspond with pin holes on a separate
component in this case a raspberry pi
zero
and the goal is to melt solder down into
the pinholes
and onto the pads behind them thereby
fusing the two boards together
i've shown this technique with several
different projects on this channel such
as ampersand's
null 2 project which made heavy use of
it i'm actually a pretty big fan of that
design because it lets you use
cheap off-the-shelf components on top of
a relatively
simple inexpensive pcb we also use this
technique in the minty pie to make it
quite a bit thinner because we don't
need any header pins the two boards are
just fused
directly together now this type of
soldering is definitely a little more
challenging but i really think that if
you practice at it you can get the hang
of it
now a common mistake that i see with
this type of soldering is that
people try to just kind of drizzle
solder down into those pinholes
that is not going to work at all and
you're just going to make a big mess
instead like i mentioned earlier the
goal is to heat up
both the pinhole and the pad underneath
it so you want to use a
finer soldering iron tip that can
actually reach down into the hole a
little bit
for this type of soldering don't go too
thin though because then there's not
enough surface area or mass to be able
to transfer the heat
onto the pinhole in the pad underneath
it so anyway like i've shown in several
previous projects what you want to do is
put some solder down into the pinhole
and then
insert the soldering iron tip behind it
stick it down in there for a few seconds
to make sure everything gets heated up
and then remove it quickly
and if you did it right then there's a
good chance that you'll see all the
solder kind of settle down
into the hole there for this type of
soldering you're definitely going to
want to have a multimeter
so that you can check continuity between
what you just soldered
and wherever that pad leads to some
projects like the null 2
and the minty pie will have test pads on
them so that you can test continuity
between each pin that you just soldered
and that test pad if you find that you
have not made a good connection
uh then my kind of go-to trick for
fixing those
is to take a piece of wire heat it up
and stick it down into the pinhole in
question
and you can kind of wiggle it around and
hopefully get that solder to make its
way down there onto the pad below it now
you might be tempted to add quite a bit
of solder to make sure that has a good
solid connection but if you add too much
then you run the risk of leaking solder
onto neighboring pads underneath it
so you need to be careful to add just
the right amount of solder this can take
some practice
and there are actually some practice
boards that i mentioned in a couple
previous videos
that helder designed and put up on osh
park that you can go and purchase
directly from them
they're not very expensive and they've
got test pads on them so it is worth
getting a couple of sets of these
and practicing on them if you're doing a
project that uses this kind of soldering
as i've mentioned in previous videos you
can spend anywhere from a few dollars
all the way up to several hundred
dollars on a soldering setup
and i don't necessarily recommend going
to either of those extremes
at the low end of the spectrum you're
going to get an iron that you plug in
and it heats up
and that's about the only control that
you have over it as you work your way up
that spectrum you'll start to see nice
features like
interchangeable tips adjustable
temperature and even hot air rework guns
which can come in really handy
this is the one that i've been using for
a while now it's called the 853d
it's got those features that i just
mentioned it's also got a really handy
feature which is a
built-in dc power supply that you can
adjust up to 15 volts
super handy for working on small
electronics projects like you see me
doing on this channel it also has a usb
power supply built in
and a voltage meter as well it's also
got a really nice feature where it'll go
to sleep if you don't pick up the
soldering iron for a while
it'll lower the temperature until you
pick it up again you can get it for
about a hundred bucks on amazon and to
me it's worth it
but if you're looking for something a
little bit cheaper the one that i used
before this one is called the 898d
it also has adjustable temperature
interchangeable tips as well as a hot
air rework
gun you can get this one for about 60
dollars now a few additional tools that
i'd recommend
for getting started first you're
definitely going to want to get a
multimeter
it's of course useful for checking
voltages or measuring resistance but the
thing that i use
most often is a beeping continuity check
to make it really easy to check
and make sure that you've gotten a good
connection next a set of helping hands
i'm a big fan of quad hands but there
are other cheaper ones on amazon that
i'm sure probably work just as well
i'd also recommend a couple of things
for taking care of the tip of your
soldering iron first a wire type tip
cleaner like this one
as you're working on a project you'll
accumulate some build up on the tip
one of these makes it so you can clean
it off periodically while you're working
on something
the other thing that i recommend is a
tip tenor and cleaner like this one
right here
basically when you're done working on a
project you can stick the tip
in there while it's still hot and then
clean it off and your tip will look
brand new when you put it away these
tips do wear out over time but taking
care of it like this will make it last a
lot longer
and then the other thing that i'd
recommend is a silicone pad to do all
your soldering on
basically nothing sticks to them
including solder it's not going to melt
it if it drips on it and you can get
them with these built-in trays to hold
screws and things like that
while you're working on projects all
right guys well that's all that i wanted
to cover hopefully this
was helpful and hopefully it made it
less intimidating to think about
learning how to solder
so that you can jump in and start doing
the kinds of projects that i show on
this channel
again check out the blog post in the
description for anything that i forgot
or that i need to add
and links to anything that i mentioned
in this video as well as always a huge
thank you to my patreon supporters
that money goes towards paying for
website hosting and tools and supplies
and parts for new projects and things
like that
so again thank you i really appreciate
that if you made it this far then thanks
for watching
and i will see you next time
you