Braided wire after "fanning" it out
Thanks Novastar for the added info. You've got great timing. I was just reviewing the tutorial again since I'm ready to start soldering for the first time after months of delays b/c of work.
I can't remember now who suggested it (it's not in this string), but I'm also going to put a bit of hot glue on all the wire-to-part joints for that extra "failsafe". Better to pull on the glue instead of the joint itself.
Soldering iron tip won't tin
OK, I'll ditch the hot glue idea. Thanks for the heads up.
Today I finally sat down to practice soldering for the first time. I'm using some scrap PCB from a piece of equipment to practice on. I'm using a 30W iron from Wal-Mart. It might not be the best choice, but some had said to use 15-25W for board work, others said 30-45, so I thought 30 was a good compromise to try out since I'm new.
The instructions said to let the iron warm up for 3 minutes (the "silver" metal of the tip and iron shaft started turning gold/brown in that time), then to tin the tip. I tried that, and like Shaas said happened to him in the LED wiring topic, the solder just beaded up into a ball and fell off the tip and wouldn't stick. As I kept trying to tin it, the tip just kept getting darker (oxidized?). The 1/4" point is now just brown/gray, and the 3/4" tip shaft and thin tip base is sort of dull to shiny metallic blue. The iron's shaft below that is still gold/brown. I kept trying long enough that you couldn't say it hadn't heated up yet.
So does this mean that the 30W can't get hot enough since the solder isn't "flowing" onto the tip? If it should be fine, what am I doing wrong? When I Googled basic soldering tips, one site recommended this solder paste/flux that both cleans and tins the tip at the same time. Has anyone used that before?