Soldering Iron recommendations

TouchingVirus

Just as the topic title suggests, any ideas about the specs/make of a soldering iron (and solder) that I can use to hone my skills before I go near a PCB? I'm thinking a 15w with lead-solder, but am open to advice on this before going out and spending money. I can't afford a professional kit at like 200 quid, so do keep that in mind

Myrddin

I just use a low power (15w) iron (Antec, I think!) which I think I got from Maplin a few years ago. Depending on what you are doing, low power for pcb level stuff, maybe a slightly higher wattage for thicker guage repairs i.e jamma cabs etc.

For console mods, I generally use a pretty small tip also.

You know the drill, practice on un-needed pcb's first. Plenty of guides online, and as you get more competant you'll wonder how you ever did without it

TouchingVirus

EnterNow wrote: »

I just use a low power (15w) iron (Antec, I think!) which I think I got from Maplin a few years ago. Depending on what you are doing, low power for pcb level stuff, maybe a slightly higher wattage for thicker guage repairs i.e jamma cabs etc.

For console mods, I generally use a pretty small tip also.

You know the drill, practice on un-needed pcb's first. Plenty of guides online, and as you get more competant you'll wonder how you ever did without it

This iron will mostly be for console mods, low level pcb stuff like swapping out an LED, the uncrippling hard drive hack for the xbox 360, things like that. I've got a higher rated one with a chisel tip I used to mod my playstation one, lets just say it didn't go well

I'll practice on an old asus motherboard that's long past it's sell by date so there's no fear of messing anything up when I do it for real.

So that's an Antec 15w with a pencil tip, anybody else?

witnessmenow

I think this is probably my next purchase:

link - Which is about £60 inc delivery




I currently own this one from DX - which is $44 inc delivery:



which is actually quite good, the reason im getting the new one is I want the tweezer one, i need a new head and it would be handy to have a spare anyways.

TouchingVirus

What are the advantages of the tweezer one over the iron with the pencil tip? £60 including delivery isn't that bad for what looks like quality kit to me when compared to the old one I've already got.

Any recommendations on flux or solder - should I got lead free? Certain brands to avoid?

The temperature control would be a must too but is 60W not a pretty hefty wattage? Most guides I've read are recommending 15W for PCB/Electrical - is that because they don't come with a temperature control?

TouchingVirus

witnessmenow wrote: »

I think this is probably my next purchase:

link - Which is about £60 inc delivery

Good enough for you, good enough for me I went and bought one of these, can't wait until I'm actually able to do stuff with it. LED mods here I come

KeRbDoG

An uprated soldering iron is what I think I need - don't know what to get though. The tweezer unit might be handy.
Any other recommendations?

TouchingVirus

Soldering wires to a PCB is not easy, anybody got tips?

I'm tining the wire and the iron, it just seems like I need 3 or 4 hands to hold the iron and wire while heating the wire & solder point (that's two hands) and another one to apply the solder from the roll.

Myrddin

People have different techniques - generally once the wire is thinned, hold the wire down on top of your solder point, then try heat both from the side of the solder point if its a big one. If its a small point, heat it from the top, with the wire held down, and let the heat pass through the wire & into the solder point.

We should only be talking seconds here, be careful of over-heating, as this will lift the circuit pathways.

TouchingVirus

EnterNow wrote: »

People have different techniques - generally once the wire is thinned, hold the wire down on top of your solder point, then try heat both from the side of the solder point if its a big one. If its a small point, heat it from the top, with the wire held down, and let the heat pass through the wire & into the solder point.

We should only be talking seconds here, be careful of over-heating, as this will lift the circuit pathways.

Cheers EnterNow, guess my iron wasn't hot enough. I've got it conservatively set at 300 for lead free solder, takes a while to do anything at that temp.

I'll give it another whirl, I've got a crappy motherboard here and I'm soldering random bits of wire onto it for the craic until I get good.

Myrddin

Im not sure about that iron - wittnessmenow will give you advice on settings to use. If the solder isnt melting/melting in clumps - then the iron isnt hot enough or the tip is too small. Try setting it that once your tip is on a pcb solder point, the whole point turns melts/flows in about 1-2 seconds (small point). You'll get the hang of it, its really easy once you do. Opens a lot of new possibilities for you to explore!

TouchingVirus

Well at 375 it melts the small points in about a second. The solder does go into a ball when I melt it so I think that's hot enough now. I think I'm self-defeating here too because the wire I'm using it Cat 5 wire, the 4 twisted pairs, no idea what the actual size of each of the 8 strands is but it's pretty chunky when put onto a tiny point here on the mobo - while the connection is made it's somewhat fragile.

Some bits on the board don't seem to want to melt either *shakes fist*

And yeah, I've been wanting to learn how to solder for a long time, L.E.D. swaps, modding

Myrddin

The wire your using is probably too thick for most mods. If you had an old IDE cable, you could rip out a few of the cores and practice with those. Once the wire is sufficiently thinned, it should have no problem joining with a pad.

Sometimes I find I have to add solder to a solder pad too, as there will not be enough on it to sufficiently hold a wire in place...so you could look at doing that if your having trouble with strenght. Again, make sure it fully flows into the existing solder, as it will be very weak otherwise. (Melt the existing pad, then flow some new solder into it)

Another point is that some pcb's, have a slight covering of a glossy resin like substance, which can make soldering a pain. This needs to be scraped off, but dont scrape too deep as the point/pad may come off. I found the PS2 board a bit*h to solder to because of this, (I know endorse ps2 soft-modding ).

TouchingVirus

Once again I appreciate the help. I've got a number of old IDE cables around here, time to splice into them. On the pads that don't seem to want to hold a join I've added more solder, seems to be working so far.

I'll be mashed out of my face on flux fumes by the time the night is over!

Myrddin

TouchingVirus wrote: »

Once again I appreciate the help. I've got a number of old IDE cables around here, time to splice into them. On the pads that don't seem to want to hold a join I've added more solder, seems to be working so far.

I'll be mashed out of my face on flux fumes by the time the night is over!

Believe it or not, that smell becomes gorgeous after a while :D Mmm think Ill go melt some solder

TouchingVirus

Looks like the copper wire from the LAN cable was just a little bit too thick. I cut a floppy drive cable, stripped a few wires off it and removed the insulation. Tinned them up and managed to solder 'em to a few of the chips and diodes on the board, the smallest points I could fit my tip on to - score! Thanks EnterNow, I'll still need a bit more practice before taking it to the xbox 360 mainboard though

Myrddin

Good to hear! When you feel your ready to tackle a console mod, pick yourself up a megadrive 1 (if you dont have one), and do the 50/60hz & language switch mod. Very straight foreward, and all the benefits of 60hz goodness