First experiments a few weeks ago were... ok. Did a few simple wire joins.
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Some experiments with/without flux and a misguided attempt to tin stranded wire before a join.
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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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Latest: tried soldering parts onto a perfboard. This was easier than the motor but harder than wire joins. They tell you to heat the joint first for a couple of seconds before adding the solder. Easier said than fine. These are bad joints but at least I didn’t damage parts.
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Initially I was bad at cleaning and running the tip. Either I’d end up with tiny beads on the tip, or a large blob.
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But I’ve discovered tinning the tip is not optional. Heat transfer is nearly non-existent if you don’t. Here’s crappy current state after post-session tinning.
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I think the trick is to let the tinning blob flow around and down the cone/chisel tip? Dunno. Definitely not like applying paint. More like trying to get a drop of water to coat an oily toothpick tip. To be investigated further 🧐
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Flux is shady stuff. It does allow solder to wet metal better but is a mess to apply and creates liquid goopy conditions at joint 😡. The solder is rosin-core so can kinda work without flux, but I wanna master flux use. It’s hard to apply. I use a q-tip.
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Finally... cleaning. Back in the day I learned to use a wet sponge, but this metal wool method is much better.
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Next:
1. Try leaded solder
2. Learn wicking
3. Figure out how to connect adjacent holes in perfboard with a bit of solder. Or do I have to put 2+ leads into single hole? 🤔
4. More tinning-the-tip practice.
5. Try motor leads again
Next level: build actual circuit.
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I remember thinking I was really good at soldering only to realize that I was destroying multiple capacitive mics by not realizing how sensitive they are to heat...

