Soldering

[tsumake]

Hey Guys,

For a while I've been interested in learning how to solder electrical wires for the purpose of modding my saturn. But I'm deathly afraid of damaging my precious machine. Are there any good guides for soldering? Also, are there any good learning kits for the job, like a practice PCB to get experience? I'd like to practice a bit before doing any actual modding. Thanks!

 

[lordofduct]

Just go to Radio shits. Get some PCB boards and solder and wires and just practice. Then to keep it safe when you graduate to the real thing, keep a roll of electrical tape at hand and stick it down around the area you are going to solder so you don't cross over a connection. Then sooner or later you'll be good enough to just do it on your own.

Uh oh, Cybie is here. He's just gonna blow me out of the water now. (Cybie happens to be looking at the page at the same time as me.)

 

[ExCyber]

Short version: what lordofduct said.

Long version:

I'm generally a fan of this illustrated soldering guide, but there's honestly no substitute for practice. Note that the "tip tinner" compound is not really necessary; you can just use solder for the same purpose if needed, just be sure to wipe the excess off before making a joint. As far as practice kits, you could just buy a few components and a prototyping board (and a 15W or so iron, and a sponge, and some solder, and some desoldering braid...) from a local electronics shop (the US has RadioShack, other countries usually have something a little nicer for hobbyists it seems), or if you feel slightly more brave you could try desoldering/resoldering some old junk electronics (old PC expansion cards, broken VCRs, CD players etc. but stay away from things like microwave ovens and TVs/monitors because they can be dangerous to get inside if you don't know what you're doing) Really, soldering is not very hard once you get the hang of it; keep these things in mind as you practice:

1) Solder does not stick to dirty/oxidized stuff. If the solder just refuses to stick, you probably need to clean the joint area.

2) A dirty/oxidized iron tip transfers heat poorly. If the solder never seems to melt, clean and re-tin your tip.

3) Molten solder tends to follow heat (I don't know exactly why this is, probably something to do with surface tension). Thus to get good coverage it's usually a good idea to apply solder from the side of the joint opposite the iron. I've never seen this mentioned explicitly but after I figured it out I started noticing that most illustrations of soldering show it this way.

4) Whenever reasonable, set up some kind of mechanical hold in addition to the solder. Don't go crazy and go over all your connections with hot-glue, but try to position things so that if they are rattled/pulled you are not just rattling/pulling on the solder joint itself. This is called "strain relief" and doesn't exactly have to do with soldering but is generally just good engineering practice.

 

[lordofduct]

Originally posted by ExCyber

3) Molten solder tends to follow heat (I don't know exactly why this is, probably something to do with surface tension).

I can help with this explanation. It is a phenomena found in Physics called thermomigration... it is kind of like (or exactly like) electromigration. The conductor will reach a certain temperature and it becomes. well simply it gets charged up and starts getting attracted to areas that has to be balanced out. Seeing how the charge is leaving the iron by heat and traveling through out the PCB or whatever you are soldering the solder flows towards the higher temperature or source to complete the circle.

 

[Scared0o0Rabbit]

I'm not even going to pretend that I read all that (mostly cause I already know how to solder), but I got my first pointers at giving it a shot on www.gamesx.com they have a guide.

First thing I ever soldered was the A+B on a modchip and then a wire to it's power.

Good luck to ya!

...oh and you might wanna practice a bit before you just jump into the saturn, if you screw up your saturn you'll be sad.

 

[lordofduct]

I would say it was about 4 years ago when I modded my Saturn. I owned three, a model 1 and 2 model 2's. I tried modding the 64 pin chip one (remember no A+B was known at the time) and DESTROYED the thing. I soldered it to the wrong pin and I wasn't very good at desoldering yet and well I broke the pin right off the 64pin chip on the cd board. I shed a tear then grabbed my other model 2 saturn.

 

[siamese]

Originally posted by lordofduct@Wed, 2005-01-26 @ 06:14 AM

I can help with this explanation. It is a phenomena found in Physics called thermomigration... it is kind of like (or exactly like) electromigration. The conductor will reach a certain temperature and it becomes. well simply it gets charged up and starts getting attracted to areas that has to be balanced out. Seeing how the charge is leaving the iron by heat and traveling through out the PCB or whatever you are soldering the solder flows towards the higher temperature or source to complete the circle.

[post=128414]Quoted post[/post]​

This guy KNOWS ! once again thanks :bow