
Soldering is easy - 7 page comic book about how to solder - nordgren
http://log.andie.se/post/4529161438/soldering-is-easy-the-comic-book
======
jerryr
Hah. That's great. Soldering _is_ easy. And, a soldering iron is almost as
versatile as a Swiss Army knife[1]. You can use it for soldering, wood
burning, spot retouching a hot-glue job, boiling water, opening those pesky
Costco clamshell packages without slicing an artery, shaping open or closed-
cell foam, giving toy soldiers horrific battle wounds, rosin-based
aromatherapy, a(u)nt punishment, and general hole-melting. It's the lightsaber
of our millennium.

And finally, to make this comment more useful, so I don't hemorrhage my 33
points of karma: If you've ever wanted to gracefully rework SOICs, QFPs, etc.,
invest in a good hot air system with appropriately-shaped spreading tips.
Amazon has a basic kit for $139: [http://www.amazon.com/X-TRONIC-Digital-
Rework-Soldering-Stat...](http://www.amazon.com/X-TRONIC-Digital-Rework-
Soldering-Station/dp/B003TC8EQS/)

Do _not_ use ChipQuik. It's expensive, unnecessary, and messy.

[1] Metcal enthusiasts, before you have a heart attack, recall that Radio
Shack sells disposable lightsabers for $7.99.

~~~
gnaffle
Well the Metcal tips only slightly more expensive than the Radio Shack sabers
and are easily replaced, although I wonder what they'd say if someone called
them and asked which tip would be appropriate for boiling water or
aromatherapy. :)

------
cypherpunks
Issues:

1) The solder should always be convex, not concave. It's not that way in the
illustrations. A concave ball, as sometimes shown, may be a good connection to
the pad, but a cold joint to the wire. It'll work, for a bit, but may
eventually fail.

2) Always, always, always keep the tip tinned (covered with a thin layer of
solder). The solder acts as a thermal conductor between the iron and the
joint, which lets the joint heat up much more quickly. It also prevents the
iron from oxidizing. If you don't do this, the iron will oxidize, and you will
no longer be able to tin it.

3) Feed the solder into the joint, not into the iron. That tells you the joint
is hot enough.

4) Temperature controlled iron makes a huge difference. Weller WES51 is the
minimum you should use ($90 or so). More expensive irons in the Weller line
don't make a big difference. Metcals are nicer, but wicked expensive.

------
kqr2
Although not quite a comic, Forrest Mims' _Getting Started in Electronics_ is
considered a classic.

[http://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/12/the-greatest-
electronics-b...](http://mightyohm.com/blog/2008/12/the-greatest-electronics-
book-ever-written/)

 _Citizen Engineer_ is a comic book / zine / electronics kit. Unfortunately,
they haven't released a volume 2 yet.

<http://www.citizenengineer.com/>

------
Natsu
There's no mention of using desoldering braid (or even the suction bulbs) to
fix bad joints? Sorry, but I don't like the "whack the circuit board on the
table" method.

Once you get used to doing it right, desoldering braid is awesome. I never did
get the hang of those squeeze bulbs, though. The braid was always so much
easier to use.

~~~
Symmetry
They're keeping it simple. No mention of microscopes, dental tools, hot air
guns, flux pens, or solder paste either. But yeah, I'm not sure I'd try his
desoldering method either.

~~~
Natsu
I wouldn't complain if they didn't mention desoldering at all. But they do
mention it and they only give one method for it, as if that's the only way to
do it!

I've actually done more desoldering than soldering and I would have gone crazy
if I had tried to do it that way. I find braid to be the easiest method by
far, but that's just personal preference. I'm sure there are people other than
me who can get the suction devices to work well and who don't have to buy
braid all the time.

------
gamble
Great little guide.

One thing that's rarely mentioned in soldering tutorials is temperature. With
good temperature-controlled soldering stations like the Weller WES51 available
for <$100, I'd be hard-pressed to recommend skimping on a cheap pencil iron.
Trouble is, I've seen very little discussion about what temperatures to use
for particular types of solder.

I put this question to one of the EE lab instructors at my university. Their
choice is 700-750F for standard 60/40 solder. I use 750F at home with good
results.

You need higher temperatures for lead-free solders, which is one of the
reasons I avoid them.

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bugsy
Hurray, it's the Manga Guide to Soldering. Good stuff, I love these things.

One of the amazing side effects of technical comic guides are that small
children, who are not really the target audience, end up picking these up and
learning things like Physics, Database Design, and now Soldering.

~~~
tylero
When I was working a booth at Wondercon, an 11-year-old girl picked up a copy
of the Manga Guide to Electricity and told me, "Reading this book was fun!"
Made my day. (I edit the series.)

------
iigs
Neat comic.

My opinion differs on soldering irons. I find that cheap electric soldering
pens tend to give me poor results. For someone starting out I think this could
be discouraging. Radio shack has a cheap butane pen that works much better for
me. It does cost slightly more, but I find it is usable on a wider range of
projects and can even heat shrink tube in a pinch.

~~~
m0shen
I would recommend buying an Aoyue temperature controlled soldering station
([http://www.amazon.com/Aoyue-936-AOYUE-Soldering-
Station/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Aoyue-936-AOYUE-Soldering-
Station/dp/B000VINMRO/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1302632135&sr=8-9) $39.99)

It doesn't cost much to get a great iron.

~~~
calloc
Having used the Aoyue I found that it is not nearly as nice and does not keep
temperature nearly as well as a nice Hakko soldering iron. The Hakko FX-888[1]
(replacement for the Hakko 936) is absolutely fantastic. I used to own a Hakko
936 until it got stolen and it was by far the best soldering station I have
ever owned.

[1]:
[http://www.hakkousa.com/detail.asp?CID=49&PID=4800&P...](http://www.hakkousa.com/detail.asp?CID=49&PID=4800&Page=1)

------
lell
Interesting comic. I was thinking about giving it to my kids, but it gets a
bit too complicated starting on page 4. And there are no simple examples. It
would be nicer as a longer series that explained how to make some simple
circuits in the same down to earth tone.

------
Florin_Andrei
I prefer to cut the leads before I solder them - this way there's no risk of
unsettling the contact while you cut the soldered lead, so this gives you nice
solid reliable contacts. This requires you to hold the component with one
finger while you're soldering it (otherwise it may fall off), which may get
tricky as the component becomes pretty hot, but with enough kung-fu you'll be
able to do it easily (e.g., hold it with the fingernail). I soldered thousands
of components this way.

Another tip: when in doubt, put a little rosin on the pad and lead before
soldering them, even though the alloy is supposed to contain rosin already.
Again, this reduces the risk of a poor contact.

Never use cheap unstabilized soldering irons - those are only for rough jobs
like soldering the lid on a tin can, and then just use the biggest iron you
can find. For electronics, only use stabilized (regulated) irons (soldering
stations), that allow you to finely tweak the temperature. Working at the
right temperature is crucial; too hot and you burn components and oxidize pads
before they get soldered; too low and again you may burn components because
you're fiddling with the iron too long; or you make weak unreliable contacts.
You'll figure it out with experience.

I actually prefer to use a soldering gun instead of an iron for anything
except very sensitive multi-pin components that don't like EM pulses. Again,
it's a bit of kung-fu to know when to push the trigger and when to release it;
essentially, your brain becomes the thermal stabilizer. :) You need to "wax
on, wax off" many hours before you obtain the skills, but then it's awesome.
The gun allows you to do neat tricks like transport large drops of solid
rosin, because you heat it up or cool it down instantly, as needed; a station,
OTOH, is always at the same temperature.

Heating up both lead and pad at the same time is crucial. It bears repeating -
crucial. Push the iron or gun against both parts. Don't push too hard, but
make sure the thermal contact is good and firm.

Whether you wait 1 second before touching the heated pad+lead with the alloy,
or you don't wait, depends on the technique. Whether you wait 1 more second
before you retract the iron, or you don't wait, again depends on the
technique. But once the liquid alloy has spread out, pull the iron at once,
don't tarry. Then blow air over the hot area.

Nail clippers work just fine for cutting leads.

Sometimes you don't want to solder components too close to the PCB. This is
true for those resistors, transistors, etc. that dissipate a lot of heat while
working. Give them some breathing room. In general, don't push 3-pin
components (such as transistors) too close to the PCB; when they begin to
resist, you need to stop pushing. But soldering them might be tricky if
they're not sitting stable in that position.

All that stuff about toxic metals and rosin fumes - I should probably be a
brain dead zombie by now, I never washed my hands afterwards. Rosin smells
kind of nice actually, similar to incense, but breathing the smoke directly is
not pleasant; I doubt the smoke is more toxic than any other kind of smoke.

Finally: 2 hands are sometimes not enough. It helps if you're an octopus.

~~~
calloc
Don't inhale solder and flux fumes ... you end up coughing up a lung or two,
and if you do inhale enough of it (i've got some stupid friends) then your
poop may turn black for a day or two.

In other words, make sure you have some way of moving the fumes out of your
workspace, preferably having a wide open area, and or a fume extractor (Weller
makes a great one).

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Not sure what flux is that. I use pure rosin (colophony, Greek pitch - it's
just solid pine sap) exclusively, never used anything else, and it's not
nearly as bad. It's no different from incense in any way. One reason to stick
to colophony is that I kind of like the smell. Incense-smelling clothes and
hair were a staple of my teen years. :)

With proper technique, rosin is highly effective as flux.

Once I did a trial with aspirin instead, out of curiosity, but that stuff is
devil's brainchild. It's very effective, it allows you to solder stuff on
oxidized surfaces without problems, but the fumes will burn your nose, throat
and windpipe - and maybe lungs too if you breathe deeply, which is pretty hard
because you start coughing immediately. It's acid smoke, very corrosive. I
tried it, then refused to use it again.

~~~
calloc
I don't know exactly what the stuff was, we had it at uni. You inhaled the
smoke and you instantly started coughing, it was bad...

~~~
tesseract
I've found that the newer no-clean and water-based fluxes give off some fairly
nasty fumes. Rosin flux unless it's a very heavily activated type doesn't
really bother me, although if I had a job that exposed me to it regularly I
might start to worry about long term issues.

~~~
gcb
everything in excess damages you somehow.

------
RevRal
I feel really stupid about a mistake I made recently while soldering, and this
is extremely obvious: don't get cocky about where you're soldering.

I've been soldering for years, and just once I thought "you know, I'll just
solder right here on the carpet. I'll be careful not to knock the iron over,"
instead of moving to my work desk. I melted a hole in the carpet.

------
chaffneue
It's a fun guide, but a couple of things irk me. Bending the leads out is a
serious no-no - makes it very hard to desolder the component. if there are a
lot of components, it' better to solder them in by height, so you can allow
tricky parts like diodes, resistors and inductors to rest face down on the
table/workstation pad. I think that the things sticking out of ics and
semiconductors are usually "pins" not leads. Banging a board on the table can
chip the board or get you burned by molten metal... it's better for the entire
job to clean the pads of solder with a vacuum tool or desolder braid. Holding
your hand over the excess while side cutting is going to hurt and having
slivers of tin, copper, nickel and lead in your palm ain't worth it. They
should have also had a little aside about wattage as starting with a 45 watt
pencil iron is going to suck.

------
blahblahblah
A couple other pointers.

1) Always tin the tip before soldering and tin it again before you put the
soldering iron in the stand. This prevents oxidation of the tip.

2) Put some flux on the joint before soldering or desoldering. Always use a
flux made for electronics, not the kind used for plumbing.

3) If the tip of the iron gets too much oxidation on it, you can generally
restore the tip (do this when the tip is cold) by putting a bit of ammonia-
based brass or silver polish on it and scrubbing it a bit with some steel wool
and then wiping with a clean rag.

4) Whenever working with wire leads, tin the wires first before setting up the
joint.

------
Jun8
Too bad they don't have a link to an mailing list for the _How to Make Cool
Things with Microcontrollers (For People Who Know Nothing)_ , I definitely
would like to be notified when that is available.

~~~
zadaz
They do today: [http://mightyohm.com/blog/2011/04/sign-up-to-be-notified-
whe...](http://mightyohm.com/blog/2011/04/sign-up-to-be-notified-when-my-book-
is-published/)

------
woadwarrior01
Soldering through hole components is really easy (SMDs are another story,
altogether). Like everything else in life, the best way to learn it is to
practice. Just get a cheap vero board and a bunch of DIP sockets and solder em
all. Then, try to desolder them with a desoldering wick. Also, get a PCB vice.
With a vice holding the PCB firmly in place, two hands are all you need.

------
rmrm
I have spent a fair amount of time over the past 15 years both removing and
installing different IC and discrete bits within hardware lab environments. I
am not an expert solderer, and I would not want to work in a production
environment, but I consider myself an exceptional solderer in the everyday
(adverse) conditions you might find in a typical HW Engineering environment.

I don't know that it'll be all that useful, but I'll share some of what I've
learned.

The key goals in an engineering environment are:

1.) You don't damage boards. No lifted pads, no torn barrels, etc. Ever.
Unless you mean to (and sometimes you do, to make salvaging a pristine part
easier.)

2.) You don't damage components while removing them unless you mean to (and
you often will, to protect the board.)

3.) Your soldering is functional. When you are doing quick iterations, and
noting the effects of whatever rework you've just performed, you need
certainty that your circuit is actually what you intended.

Tools:

With a Metcal (or equivalent) and one fine tip, one broad tip -- you can
remove or install pretty much any surface mount leaded component -- from a
0402 resistor to a large fine pitch TQFP. This sort of thing is common. You
can also remove and or install pretty much any through hole component, up to
large connectors. I'm going to talk mainly about removal, because it's not
talked about as much (as it should be) and it's the more difficult side of
things.

Removing things:

1.) small 2 lead discretes -- easiest with tweez pencil, grab it, solder flows
on both ends, pick up, easy. generally you'll want to keep the part handy as
you may go back to it, often just solder the resistor or cap to some other pad
nearby, tombstoned. If you have only one iron, and say you're removing a 0402
-- easiest is to add solder to both ends of it and dance the iron back and
forth rapidly to the leads. If the thermal reliefs are decent (as they should
be for a 0402) it will tombstone itself and come right up.

2.) soic -- easiest with two irons (perform the below at the same time on both
sides), but if you've only one, no problem. Take a SOIC16, 8 pins a side. Flow
much solder down one side, bridging all pins. With any tip you'll be able to
slide back and forth, causing all 8 leads to become molten. You want to use
enough solder to bridge REALLY well. Insert tip of tweezer or dental pick
under body near molten side and lift slightly. DO THIS VERY GENTLY. If all of
pins aren't actually molten, and you pry on it, you will lift pads. It takes
very, very little pressure. Once one side has lifted slightly, go to the other
side and do the same thing. Now your SOIC is sitting above the board on both
sides, sitting on solder piling. Take some solder braid and wick the solder
from underneath the pins. Your SOIC will come loose, and you can clean it and
the pads up with wick. SOIC is good for reuse, no lifted pads. If you did this
with one iron and had to slightly lever the part, reform the leads slightly
using tweezers.

3.) TQFP fine pitch -- It's always best to have all the right tools, my guide
is how to do it when you don't have the right tools -- but need to do it
anyway, and still pull it off. These are tricky.

With 4 irons (2 people) I've performed the solder bridge method, works well.
Just flow all pins and remove part. With 1 guy, one iron, it can be done but
you'll have to reform some leads when you're done. What you want to do is use
fine tweezers or dental pick, and you're going to heat up one pin at a time
and use the tip of the tweezer or pick to pluck the pin forward, lifting it
up. You want to really heat up the pad, make sure solder is fully molten.
Adding some flux is a good idea. Fine pitch pads with tiny traces are
notoriously difficult to rework without lifting pads -- because people don't
heat enough before yanking. You will probably lose some no connect pads using
this method, tough not too.

You want to use this method on as few of the pins as possible, as its the most
dangerous method. I cant stress enough, HEAT before applying any upward
pressure. You want to work yourself into position to use the solder bridge
method.

Do the above on two opposing sides (sides A and C). Just work your way down
and do all the pins on both sides. Make sure all pins you think are free
really are -- go through with wick and suck up the solder under the leads
you've lifted. With two sides lifted you're back to a SOIC essentially..use
the solder bridge method to lift sides B and D.

I've done many dozens of large TQFPs this way, with one iron, with no lifted
pads. If can be done, just be very careful and take your time.

4.) Large through hole things with many pins (connectors, power bricks, etc)
--

discretion is the better part of valor. If you are dealing with something with
many through hole pads that touch heavy ground or power planes on multiple
pins -- your best bet is to destroy the part. Trying to solder suck or wick
out power and ground pins with a single iron is sometimes just impossible to
do -- you will be at it for a long time, until the pads finally falls apart
and you lose the annular ring, and your board is damaged.

If you only have one or two pins connected to a plane -- and all the rest are
signals pins -- then clear the signal pins using wick/sucker, and then try to
heat the reaminder of your plane pins at once. If you can get them all to
flow, you can just yank the part out -- and THEN clear those plane connected
pins.

If your part doesn't lend itself to this -- get out the dremel tool or the
cutters and go to work on the part, systematically chopping or cutting it down
until you are left with nothing but the pins in the holes....then simply heat
the pad and pull out the pins with tweezers. THEN clear the hole. It is almost
always the right choice, I've seen more boards destroyed by people trying to
remove large through hole connectors and power bricks, when preserving the
part was not a necessity. Know the goal -- if the part can go, then chop it
out in little chunks. Not only the right thing, but kind of fun, too.

OK, that's all I can type for now -- I'm sure everyone has their pet methods
and whatnot, and there are always caveats. I think its good to have the tool
bag to perform "down and dirty". Honestly most places I've been, that's all
there is or is time for.

~~~
pontifier
I wish I had read this a few days ago...

I was trying to desolder a damaged mini usb port on my wifes mp3 player. heat,
wiggle, heat, wiggle, pull... broke the traces. I should have cut the
offending part down first to avoid damaging the board.

