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Starting a new maker adventures thread. Soldering! My previous thread on experiments with the Elegoo mega2560 starter kit are here
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Starting to play with Arduino more. First I’ve fiddled with electronic assembly in ~20 years and the biggest learning is: middle-aged eyesight and finger dexterity suck. Reading resistor values and assembling even a simple circuit was more eye/finger strain than I expected.
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I had a cheap crap one as a kid in the 80s. No temperature control, no stand, no teacher, no YouTube, no Dummies book. Didn’t get far. In grad school logged maybe 5-6 hours making custom d-sub cables but didn’t really learn. Third times the charm, let’s see how far I get.
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Rest of setup: lead-free solder (works poorly), flux, wick which I haven’t yet tried using. Extra fine tip I haven’t used yet. Fume extractor I rigged up with fume tube exhausting to window. Silicone mat, helping hands with magnifying glass.
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The fume setup is because after first session my air quality monitor went nuts. I’m pretty sensitive and wife complained too, so decided to fix before proceeding. The fan alone just recirculated the fumes, so added the ventilation tube, plus extra box fan with carbon filter.
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Success! Now after session the pm2.5 seems to peak around 30 rather than 300. About as much as cooking with a bit of charring.
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Screwed up badly attempting to solder leads onto a motor. Ended up ripping the delicate copper lead off because I couldn’t quite figure out how to do it quickly with a light touch. 😢 Setting this aside for now. This is advanced green belt stuff. I’m still yellow belt.
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