I wouldn't go over 650F myself, plenty hot enough to get a quick tinning on boards and reflow when joiing two already tinned parts.
Printable View
I wouldn't go over 650F myself, plenty hot enough to get a quick tinning on boards and reflow when joiing two already tinned parts.
Here's another great tutorial I just found:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrVCkEoY_8M
Excellent! Thanks for the tip!
I usually run mine around 600-650F.
These are all great tips, and I think I'll probably come back to this page when I go to work soldering later.
I'm going to echo the other thoughts here, practice on stuff you don't care about. My first go into soldering, I bought a $15 kit from Fry's that teaches you how to solder with the eventual product being a little alarm with flashing lights and sounds. It's super cheap compared to a sound card, and it offered lots of soldering opportunities.
I would also suggest getting some "helping hands" with hinges, not bendy arms ($10). I use a ball of brass mesh ($8 ) to clean my iron instead of a wet sponge. I find it works much better and doesn't cool down the tip, which then needs to reheat before next use.
For the iron, don't go too cheap. The cheap ones are often not ESD (electro-static discharge) safe, and they only have one temperature setting. I use a battery powered one (as well as a good stash of rechargeable AA batteries) which has two power settings. It was only about $25, and it's worked like a champ. It also has the feature of shutting itself off when it runs out of juice. This is a great feature for those of us who are chronically forgetful. I once left a traditional plug-in iron on all weekend, and it was completely wrecked when I came back to it.
I can recommend the three EEVblog tutorials on soldering (and EEVblog in general!):
Part 1 - Tools - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Sb21qbpEQ
Part 2 - Through-hole components - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYz5nIHH0iY
Part 3 - Surface-mount components - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9FC9fAlfQE