Okay,
There's the soldering iron, the wire, the solder, and the work.
How the hell do you guys do it.(I was only born with *two* hands).
And if I'm lucky enough to bring everything to the exact same spot(which is a crap shoot) the solder is either not melting, or melting too fast so that I'm chasing little balls of solder(like it's mercury) around the point it's was supposed to harden.
Someone have a video? :-)
Thanks.
Darren Harris Staten Island, New York.
Get the "helping hand" soldering aid with clips on flexible arms that will hold the parts so you can solder them. Allelectronics.com carries them, and probably a lot of other suppliers do.
Practice.
My most difficult challenge was stringing SMD LEDs that are only 3mm long by 1mm wide on 2 strings of bare wires. I need a hand for tweezer for the LED, 2 hands to hold both sides of the wire, 1 hand for the solder, 1 hand for the iron, and one more for the magnifying glass.
Some of those can be reduced if you picked up a stand that has 2 clips and magnifying glass from almost any electronics store (including Radio Shack) but it still takes practice to hold the wire or object, the iron, and solder together at once.
You could also practice eating with chopsticks. It takes practice to hold 2 sticks in one hand only.
-- When you hear the toilet flush, and hear the words "uh oh", it\'s already too late. - by anonymous Mother in Austin, TX To reply, replace digi.mon with phreaker.net
they have what is called a little mini vice. and board holder.
-- Real Programmers Do things like this. http://webpages.charter.net/jamie_5
If it's a pcb, fit the lowest components first (eg links), lay face down on a beer mat to hold them in place and solder up. Fit next lowest (eg resistors & diodes) and gradually work up to the tallest. Drink the beer.
There is a video,
Tin the soldering iron, tin the wire, hold the wire in one hand and the iron in the other. With the work lying on the bench, place and hold the wire to the correct spot, and bring the iron to that spot until the solder melts. Remove the iron while still holding the wire in place. Repeat at the other end of the wire. It is now "tacked" in place. You can go back to each end, heat the joint and apply solder to it - the joint, not the iron - until it melts. Then remove the solder and the iron. Sometimes you need to hold the tacked wire in place while at the same time feeding solder to the joint and holding the iron to the point. You can develop a technique where you hold a pencil in your fist, and the solder in the thumb & forefinger of that hand. The eraser end of the pencil holds the wire in place an inch or two from the joint, you feed the solder with your thumb and forefinger while heating the joint with the iron held in your other hand.
You don't keed a lot of solder. You do need a clean, tinned iron, and tinning the parts being assembled can be a big help. Always tin the wire before soldering it to the circuit. And always make sure that what you are soldering it to is clean.
Ed
first off, if soldering loose parts get the solder sticking to both parts individually then hold one in the vice (or between your knees etc :) get a blob of solder hanging off your soldering iron hold put down the solder pick up the other part and solder them together, If you've got a cheap soldering iron like me the blob of solder will be real hot by now and take a few seconds to set.
There's a tool you can get with little ball-jointed arms with aligator clips on the ends, but I made my own using some #4 (I think) conduit cable which is stiff enough to hold its shape and a mid-sized aligator clip. I wedged the cable in a crack in my work bench.
Bye. Jasen
Alrighty...
Others have suggested "third hand" devices or mini-vises. If you're in a rush (or can't afford such toolery right now), improvise; stack books or whatever to hold the wire in place, and do whatever you need to so that the work holds still.
I just had to join three Cat-5 patch cords together to make an ethernet cable long enough to reach (they were all I had on hand), and without the right tools; bench vise etc.) so I did the book-stacking trick, tweaking things so that the wires I wanted to join were touching, for each friggin' pair of wires. Strip, tin, stack, tweak, cut and slip on heatshrink, solder, heatshrink, re-tweak, etc. Sixteen solder joints, five minutes from first strip to plug-n-pray. Worked fine.
Oh, yeah; practice.
What kind of solder are you trying to use, and how hot is your iron? Tinning the parts to be soldered before actually trying to solder them together does help as other have said, but make sure you have decent flux-cored solder and the right iron.
Little solder balls usually indicates inadequate/no flux or a too-cold iron; flux cleans off the inevitable oxide layer on metals which solder will not stick to, and you must heat the work (or wire) to the point that the flux melts out of the solder onto the work first as you touch the solder to the work. Then as the solder melts it flows easily onto the work.
If the insulation just starts to melt, your iron's hot enough. ;>)
Prolly one out there somewhere, but nothing beats practice.
Mark L. Fergerson
Fortunately most of us have 10 fingers... At some point of practice, you should be able to get 2 sets of fingers on each hand to do something separate. For instance, I use my right hand for the iron, and my left index and thumb to hold the solder, and pinky and ring finger on left to hold the work i'm soldering... often times I also use my right hand to hold the soldering iron, and the other wire i'm trying to solder to...
As someone already said... practice.
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.