Basic Soldering Tips and

Techniques!

RM1B

Before starting the construction of a soldering project, be sure that your soldering iron tip is in good shape! A small piece of 120 Grit sandpaper works well for shaping the tip of your iron!

Hold the soldering iron at the angle of

the tip and move the soldering iron tip back and forth

across the paper to clean and shape the

tip.

If your solder tip is in very poor shape, you may need to use a flat file

to clean and shape your tip.

Once you have cleaned and shaped the tip of your soldering iron, plug the iron in and stand-by to “TIN” the tip of the iron with solder as soon as

it is hot enough to melt the solder.

“Tinning” the tip means to coat the tip with solder. Tinning the tip allows

solder to flow freely from the tip and allows better

heat transfer to your circuit board!

As you use your soldering iron, be sure to cool and clean the tip frequently using a damp sponge.

Cooling the tip down keeps the user from “burning” the circuit board as easily. Likewise, it keeps the tip clean so that you can do a quality job!

The objective when soldering is to get the solder to bond to the copper board. To do this effectively, use the tip of the iron to create a wedge between the wire lead and the copper pad you are trying to solder. Touch the solder to the copper pad so that the heat will melt the solder around the lead and

form a bond that looks similar to a Hershey’s Kiss!

In the next slide you will see a photograph of HOW the soldered joint should look.

This is how a finished solder joint should look. You can see how it has the basic shape of a Hershey’s Kiss!

This is how the solder should look once it has bonded the wire lead to the copper. Be careful not to use excessive solder because this can lead to solder bridging which creates a short circuit and must be corrected!

This is a solder bridge. Excessive solder has connected both pins together and connected them to the center line of copper which should NOT be connected.

To remove UNWANTED solder, a DE-SOLDERING

TOOL (Vacuum Pump) must be used to extract

the unwanted solder!

Be careful as you are working to keep your soldering iron cord AWAY from the heating element of the soldering iron. On occasion, the iron can burn through the cord causing fatal damage to the iron and can give the student a pretty good scare as well!

Be sure to use sharp wire clippers to cut the wire leads right against the top of the solder joint. It’s important to “CUT”

the wire lead and NOT to PULL on the wire.

Pulling can cause the copper to separate from

the board.