Solder Check... First time Soldering!

[cdo221]

Hi all, I'm building my first lightsaber and also I have nearly zero experience soldering (only time I've soldered is to replace a speaker on a GCS lightsaber I have, so I've soldered literally only 2 connections before this). Can anybody take a look at my LED .. should I redo my soldering or do they look OK?

http://i.imgur.com/INmFJm9.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/V6CXCHp.jpg


They hold up to light tugging no problem but they don't look very pretty! Any advice or suggestions is apprecatied!

[darth_chasm]

They're not pretty but not bad. Doesn't look like there are any unintended connections or cold joints. Your leads on the blue and greens wires are a little long and uncovered at a slight stress point. The color coding seems backwards to me. In the exception of a Prizm board, which shares a common +, I would have done the +'s color coded and the negatives one color. Last, my eyes aren't great so I can't tell, but is that solid core or stranded wire?

[Silver Serpent]

Some of those wires are a bit long, but it looks functional. That's a decent enough job considering it's your first time soldering.

A bit of advice: If you have to re-do any of those connections, you'll NEED to remove the LED star from the heatsink. And you'll have to replace the thermal pad afterwards.

[Greenie]

A bit of advice: If you have to re-do any of those connections, you'll NEED to remove the LED star from the heatsink. And you'll have to replace the thermal pad afterwards.

.......and that's why I always recommend buying two ;)

[cdo221]

Thanks for the advice everyone! I suppose I'll leave it on as is and redo it if it does end up becoming a problem. I gave it a few more harder tugs and the wires stayed put so hopefully all will be good.

@darth_chasm, those are stranded wires (not solid core) it is the 26 gauge wire from TCSS

I've also bought quite a bunch of the thermal tape so I have plenty if I need to remove it...I was watching Rob's (mad cow) videos on how to build various parts of the saber and I do remember he suggested to buy multiples just in case! Good thing I listened to his advice!

As for the color coding, it is for the Prizm 3.5 soundboard so I just followed the manual wiring diagram to have the +s all shared, while the -s are color coded (and also resistored on the -'s)

[darth_chasm]

@darth_chasm, those are stranded wires (not solid core)

As for the color coding, it is for the Prizm 3.5 soundboard so I just followed the manual wiring diagram to have the +s all shared, while the -s are color coded (and also resistored on the -'s)

Cool. The leds are probably the hardest things to solder, but it gets easier with practice. I pre-tin the wires and the pads on the star first, then pre-tin my iron tip. This seems to help a lot. For me anyway. Good luck on the rest of your build.