Soldering thread

[GSS]

I damaged my adjustable weller so now I just use the cheap $4 harbor freight tools irons because when the tip wears down I just buy another iron. I keep a few handy. They're 40w. Does what I need.

Good thread here for at least the less knowledged and inexperienced like me. Also me too with these Harbor Freight iron's. The tips do wear down quite quickly to a nub or just seem to corrode in half no matter how clean I try to keep them. So I have a draw with about 5 with worn tips and since they are so cheap and don't offer replacement tips again like said I just buy a new one.
Figures I enjoy a hobby that requires soldering and with my shaky hand just putting 2 wires together is hassle at times. Never ever will I be able to pin a diode.
Anyways I have a better iron on the way from a member here along with some good extra's.
Seoul your right soldering should be the relaxing meditation part of a build but for me its the nerve racking part but the videos you posted have helped alot. Lot's of "tips"!

Edit: Iv'e been a little MIA lately cause i'm having a laptop cord issue and come to think of it when my new cord arrives the old cord might be a good practice soldering piece?!?

 

[Seoul_lasers]

Good thread here for at least the less knowledged and inexperienced like me. Also me too with these Harbor Freight iron's. The tips do wear down quite quickly to a nub or just seem to corrode in half no matter how clean I try to keep them. So I have a draw with about 5 with worn tips and since they are so cheap and don't offer replacement tips again like said I just buy a new one.
Figures I enjoy a hobby that requires soldering and with my shaky hand just putting 2 wires together is hassle at times. Never ever will I be able to pin a diode.
Anyways I have a better iron on the way from a member here along with some good extra's.
Seoul your right soldering should be the relaxing meditation part of a build but for me its the nerve racking part but the videos you posted have helped alot. Lot's of "tips"!

Edit: Iv'e been a little MIA lately cause i'm having a laptop cord issue and come to think of it when my new cord arrives the old cord might be a good practice soldering piece?!?

Good to know that this soldering thread is helping you. I would like the Admins to actually create a separate portion on the forum devoted to exactly this., a soldering section discussing the best techniques and best kinds of equipment and methods.
Your idea of practicing on an old chord is a great idea. Actually one of the first things I did with my new setup is repair one of my mini-PSU (low ripple) I brought back from S.Korea and made a NA standard chord for it.

:beer::beer::beer::beer::beer:

I have decided to put an interesting video showing a re-balling process on an intel processor.
It is in Spanish but I am sure that everyone here will understand the point of using ball stencils...etc




Second video shows a reballing process in English.




I have tried reballing during our soldering class on an old processor and actually enjoyed doing it.
This is considered an upper skill level as you must do it precisely. Solder paste is more forgiving to work with than metal solder wire btw.
- key to reballing is that you must use a thin metal stencil to re-ball.
The smaller the processor the more difficult reballing becomes. You must also have a professional
hot air rework station that gives an accurate temperature reading in degrees C. (both for air temp and item you are soldering/reballing) degree F will not cut it.
ie. Hakko FR-811 or you risk destroying anything you are working on.
esp. processors and or discrete graphics processors on laptops.

 

[Benm]

Below is an interesting video link to Pb free solder paste developed by Indium corporation. It is referred to as SACm which is ~97.5-98.5% Sn, 0.5-1.0% Ag, and 0.5-1.0% Cu, with dopant levels of Mn.
The overall result is a solder paste that is very similar to SnPb eutectic.
I find this very fascinating.

http://www.indium.com/solder-paste-and-powders/SACm/video/SACm-Video.mp4

The video doesnt show very much in terms of performance.

Having a solder comparable to Sn/Pb like that would be great, especially as it's not largely silver like many lead free solders. The mangenese must be doing something very special in that formulation, as soldering with just tin and some trace amounts of copper and silver usually is not that easy.

It may depend on what you are actually doing though. For processes like reflow soldering it's not overly imporant for a solder to clean and wet a surface that well, it just has to melt, fuse, and preferably solidify at specific temperature.

Lead free solders do this job pretty well as long as all the components and the pcb has a layer on the stuff on it.

Trying to solder a couple of somewhat oxizided copper surfaces to eachother (like a wire onto a non-tinned pcb) is antother job entirely though. Given them a bit of a scratch and lead-based flux core solder will try to hang on for dear life, will the unleaded stuff seems to be trying to get away from you workpiece as if it was oil applied to water.

 

[Seoul_lasers]

I picked up a hakko handheld unit because I needed something portable and I swear the damn thing works just as good as my Velleman station... Kinda making me want a hakko station. Do you have any gripes about yours?

The only thing that annoys me about the Hakko is it's incessant need for a password every time you make a change on the Preset temperatures. (other types use a magnetic read switch to set a new temperature) You can bypass this by using the U setting which is a user custom setting.
All Hakko soldering stations require a default password AbC to change temps in the Present (P settings) You are given P1-P5 P5 being the highest temp range.
Also another pain is that it's meter face is only 3 digits and doesn't display C/F.

despite the 2 small issues, both can easily be overcome by really learning your irons manual.

The iron goes from cold to max temp in about 25-30 seconds

 

[Seoul_lasers]

The video doesn't show very much in terms of performance.

Having a solder comparable to Sn/Pb like that would be great, especially as it's not largely silver like many lead free solders. The manganese must be doing something very special in that formulation, as soldering with just tin and some trace amounts of copper and silver usually is not that easy.

It may depend on what you are actually doing though. For processes like reflow soldering it's not overly important for a solder to clean and wet a surface that well, it just has to melt, fuse, and preferably solidify at specific temperature.

Lead free solders do this job pretty well as long as all the components and the pcb has a layer on the stuff on it.

Trying to solder a couple of somewhat oxizided copper surfaces to eachother (like a wire onto a non-tinned pcb) is antother job entirely though. Given them a bit of a scratch and lead-based flux core solder will try to hang on for dear life, will the unleaded stuff seems to be trying to get away from you workpiece as if it was oil applied to water.

Apparently the Manganese as a dopant in the Indium's Pb free Eutectic acts as to increase surface hardness only very slightly.

I though I'd put up a video regarding Indium (In) metal and how it can be used as an impressive TIM.
Indium is used in the display industry to create transparent electrodes (InSnO), it is also used to wet onto glass as
its MP is only 150c.

 

[Benm]

Well yeah, Indium makes a very good base for solder, but the downside is the cost.

Market prices may be in the order of $200/kg, well over 10 times the cost of lead or tin, closer to the price of silver.

Using indium as solder would be a bit of a waste as it's very much required to produce transparant electrodes for displays and such.

 

[Seoul_lasers]

Well yeah, Indium makes a very good base for solder, but the downside is the cost.

Market prices may be in the order of $200/kg, well over 10 times the cost of lead or tin, closer to the price of silver.

Using indium as solder would be a bit of a waste as it's very much required to produce transparant electrodes for displays and such.

Indium as TIM is used to cool high value components and or wet materials that normally can't be soldered together such as glass and ceramics to metal. It is also ( more commonly used *mass wise*) in the production of semiconductors (CPUs) and to seal Vacuum chambers than in the production of displays.

While lots of displays use InSnO (ITO) for their panels the actual amount (gram per gram) of Indium used is actually quite small comparatively. I think in a 60" LCD panel only about several mg of ITO is actually used. Touch panels require more of course... We're talking conductive traces that are on order of uM thick on a glass substrate.

 

[Benm]

The layers used in displays are very thin indeed and require very little material. But when you start to use it for soldering you'll go through fairly large amounts easily.

Indium is one of those things that really needs to be recoverd from scrapped electronics. I suppose this will happen more when the price goes up, but at the moment heaps of it end up in landfills. Then again landfills can become mines quite rapidly as the price of an element goes up.

This is a problem with several elements that are mostly by-products of mining something else for now. Another prime exampe is helium that is cheap enough to fill party balloons with for now, but actually quire rare on earth. Currently it's a by-product of natural gas production, but i reckon in could be very expensive in the future. Indium is currently a by-product of lead and zinc production, but that can quickly flip once demand for it increases sharply.

 

[Seoul_lasers]

The layers used in displays are very thin indeed and require very little material. But when you start to use it for soldering you'll go through fairly large amounts easily.

Indium is one of those things that really needs to be recoverd from scrapped electronics. I suppose this will happen more when the price goes up, but at the moment heaps of it end up in landfills. Then again landfills can become mines quite rapidly as the price of an element goes up.

This is a problem with several elements that are mostly by-products of mining something else for now. Another prime exampe is helium that is cheap enough to fill party balloons with for now, but actually quire rare on earth. Currently it's a by-product of natural gas production, but i reckon in could be very expensive in the future. Indium is currently a by-product of lead and zinc production, but that can quickly flip once demand for it increases sharply.

Actually this is exactly what the Indium Corporation has been doing internationally, and especially in S.Korea. One of my students (ex-resource and raw materials manager at LG) used to buy back recovered Indium from Indium co's (In) recycling program.
~70% of ITO used at LG Display was/ and still is made in house at LG chemical division. Most of the recovered Indium in S.Korea comes from the manufacture of Samsung ARM chips, RAM, FLASH memory for SSDs, and the 100 or so pharmaceutical / bio-tech research firms scattered across the peninsula.
It's all very interesting stuff.

The amount of raw materials required to build display screens is simply mindblowing.

 

[Seoul_lasers]

Soldering with eutectic solder produces fumes that are not so healthy to breathe in. I've been looking at some fume extractors and seeing their price decided to build my own.

At school we had a vaccuum system that attached to our irons via flexible hose clamp. I'm thinking about one of those but also seeing panel style extractors using activated carbon/charcoal.
Below are some examples of diy fume extractors that people have built.
I have a different design in mind that I think would also be as effective.
More later...

 

[Benm]

If you do a -lot- of soldering that might be worth it.

The lead fumes and such become a hazard when you do it occupationally, multiple hours a day for a long period of time. In such cases proper fume extraction really is required to ensure worker safety.

If you do it as a hobby, perhaps actively soldering on average for an hour a week or less, it's much less of a concern. Afaik noone was ever admitted to hospital from that type of exposure and resulting poisoning.

Then again we had lead-based paint, lead water mains, leaded petrol and what not for many decades so the whole additional exposure from soldering might not have shown up at all

Lead-free soder might not even be all that safe either: The upper limit of exposure in the workplace for lead is 50 ug/m3, but indium is close at 100ug/m3. Silver is probably less of a problem since it has a much lower vapour pressure at comparable temperatures.

 

[Seoul_lasers]

If you do a -lot- of soldering that might be worth it.

The lead fumes and such become a hazard when you do it occupationally, multiple hours a day for a long period of time. In such cases proper fume extraction really is required to ensure worker safety.

If you do it as a hobby, perhaps actively soldering on average for an hour a week or less, it's much less of a concern. Afaik noone was ever admitted to hospital from that type of exposure and resulting poisoning.

Then again we had lead-based paint, lead water mains, leaded petrol and what not for many decades so the whole additional exposure from soldering might not have shown up at all

Lead-free soder might not even be all that safe either: The upper limit of exposure in the workplace for lead is 50 ug/m3, but indium is close at 100ug/m3. Silver is probably less of a problem since it has a much lower vapour pressure at comparable temperatures.

Lead exposure is 50ug/m3 of air sure, but lead exposure is cumulative so even a small exposure (especially to the oxides of Pb) is still a hazard.
Don't forget about flux fumes which can be potentially as / or more immediately toxic.
Whatever the risk is still a good practice to vent those fumes somewhere away from yourself.

Benm you're right of course, some of the Pb free solder has other heavy metals that are equally as poisonous Cadmium being one of them (esp. in Ag solders).
Actually more immediately concerning of course is the actual solder flux fumes which can carry anything from hydrochloric acid and a possibility of other gases containing benzene, toluene, styrene, phenol, chlorophenol and isopropyl alcohol.

One of the solder (residue less) fluxes we actually used at school briefly had both amino ethyl-ethanolamine (used as a surfactant) as well as hydrazine Hydrobromide.
The fumes must be ventilated by a Vacuum system. It has a has a strong fruity odor ( kind of like Xylene and Bananas combined).

It's a good idea and good practice to vent soldering fumes away from you.
Below is a publication talking about soldering fumes and their health effects by Weller.

http://www.elexp.com/Images/Health_Hazards.PDF

 

[GSS]

In case anyone want's to know Lifetime sent me to what I believe was his "first born" Weller iron with extra tips. Its a set heat but its all I need to help the next step.
Its the needed and thoughtful things like this that also make my day

 

[RB astro]

In case anyone want's to know Lifetime sent me to what I believe was his "first born" Weller iron with extra tips. Its a set heat but its all I need to get to the next step.
Its the needed and thoughtful things like this that make my day

That's such a nice gesture from Rich.
I hope you enjoy my friend.

RB
:wave:

 

[Benm]

That's a trusty bit of kit to have, i expect you get years of use out of that!

@Seoul: yeah, the flux fumes! I'm not even sure about what substances are typically in that, but in honesty those are a more common reason for me to ventilate any area doing solderwork that concerns about lead.

I'm not overly conviced by hydrochloric acid in them for soldering electronics, but it's definitely stingy on the eyes and lungs, so a good reason to avoid.

I think the hydrochloric acid thing mostly is from soldering copper pipes (home plumbing) with lead based solder and tin chloride solution as the flux. That acidic tin chloride suspension released HCl when heated for sure. Afaik using lead based solders is now banned in home construction, and i haven't seen it in over a decade.

For anyone in electronics: don't ever use tin chloride flux. Apart from the nasty fumes it will also corrode your components, circuit board and soldering iron tip. It's fine for solderning big copper/brass things to eachother, but apparently no longer if any drinking water runs through that.

 

[Seoul_lasers]

That's a trusty bit of kit to have, i expect you get years of use out of that!

@Seoul: yeah, the flux fumes! I'm not even sure about what substances are typically in that, but in honesty those are a more common reason for me to ventilate any area doing solderwork that concerns about lead.

I'm not overly conviced by hydrochloric acid in them for soldering electronics, but it's definitely stingy on the eyes and lungs, so a good reason to avoid.

I think the hydrochloric acid thing mostly is from soldering copper pipes (home plumbing) with lead based solder and tin chloride solution as the flux. That acidic tin chloride suspension released HCl when heated for sure. Afaik using lead based solders is now banned in home construction, and i haven't seen it in over a decade.

For anyone in electronics: don't ever use tin chloride flux. Apart from the nasty fumes it will also corrode your components, circuit board and soldering iron tip. It's fine for soldering big copper/brass things to each other, but apparently no longer if any drinking water runs through that.

Yes, the HCl is present pretty much only as a by product in Zinc Chloride/diammonium tetrachlorozincate or off-gass from acid core solder which contains HCl for plumbing or brazing brass/steel. You'd be surprised what I saw being sold as an electronics based flux overseas (esp. S.Korea in the electronics market behind Yongsan stn). Zinc Chloride based fluxes were pretty much a standard for repairing electrical. Yikes!!!

Anyways, the byproduct of organic residueless fluxes is quite often Isopropyl Alcohol and amines which I mentioned above. They are quite toxic. If you're really lucky (or not) you may even be dealing with the vapour by products from Hydrazine Hydrobromide. The fumes from the pyrolysis of hydrazine monohydrobromide soldering flux have been reported to cause severe dermatitis, respiratory/pulmonary and liver damage.
This is an excellent reason to vent solder fumes and read the MSDS on bottles of flux.


Research Gate (Medical Journals):

"Studies have shown that the colon-specific carcinogen 1, 2-dimethylhydrazine (DMH) induce oxidative stress to both liver and colon tissues [6]. It is a procarcinogen metabolized in the liver and produces highly reactive electrophiles i.e., carbonium ions and alkyl free radicals which severely damage the liver causing necrosis and fatty infiltration, methylate nucleobases and disrupt the polysomal assembly78910. The oxidative stress elicited by DMH is due to the damage brought about by free radical attack on cellular macromolecules such as lipids and DNA.

@GSS

That's great you've got a first Soldering iron and nice that Lifetime sent you that! What wattage is it?

In all honesty one shouldn't be using anything greater than ~30W for a standalone fixed temp iron esp. with 63/37.


Also thinking about wattage and heat it got me thinking about another important subject when building electronics,
that is Heat shrinking your connections. I have seen enough shorts in DIY stuff and crappily soldered together stuff from "The Source" to last a lifetime.

below is a particularly interesting video about heat shrink tubing.
Not all HS tubing is created equal or shrinks the same way.
The second is showcasing a GMT-320AL based adhesive lined shrink tube using for providing strain relief
on chords. Actually this kind of shrink tubing would work well on cheaper BNC connectors.






How to properly gauge sizes of heat shrink tubing. By AlphaWire.com