I am not new to soldering. I have some soldering experience. I have built a radio kit with no soldering problems whatsoever. I have made little boards for things like transistor amplifiers for my crystal radio. I have little surface mount experience, but in a moment of extreme courage, my boss let m e rework about 50 PCBs at once when he was on vacation. That involved solde ring a little SMT cap using tiny little wire to a nearby IC pin. Most of th e boards worked, but the job looked horribly ugly.
The reason I consider myself still a newbie, is that successes are not alwa ys repeatable, and failures are not always avoidable.
I have read numerous guides on the Internet but some things really don't cl ick. I thought I could start this thread to ask questions that will probabl y be obvious to some but still not very clear to me.
The questions at hand for now are these:
1) Soldering guides always recommend you to tin the tip of your iron with f resh solder before starting on a joint. Every time I do this the solder bur ns and discolors. Is that normal or am I doing something wrong? Do I have t o be really fast before solder burns?2) Soldering guides tell you to always heat the joint not the solder. Whene ver I do this, it seems it takes forever for solder to melt. It also seems that the pointy part of the tip (as they always show in drawings) isn't rea lly hot enough I have to find a sweet spot on the tip that is hot enough an d then touch it to the wire. Do I just have a bad iron?
3) Can I use copper wool instead of a wet sponge? I have been using it rece ntly with success. The problem is that I'm not sure if it's better than a s ponge or not. I'm not even sure of the function of the copper or the sponge . I know it's for wiping the tip clean but it's hard for me to gauge how mu ch better cleaning the tip actually provides.4) When to use flux and when is it not important? I soldered the transistor radio kit completely without flux. But also the type of solder they provid ed with the kit seemed really good, I thought may be the solder has it all.
I know this has been answered a million times before but if someone is feel ing bored may be they can share their experience. I know I probably can spe nd hours scouring internet forums and getting all sorts of conflicting info rmation. I thought I may get some direct answers here! THANKS.