Welcome to the wonderful world of soldering
(pronounced sot-er-ing).
Things to remember and helpful tips:
Soldering irons get very, very hot. Hot enough to burn your skin severely and set fire to your hair and clothes.
Today your goal is to become comfortable soldering and desoldering on practice circuit boards.
1) Plug in your soldering iron.
2) While it is heating, take the sponge from the stand and moisten it. If there are pieces of solder on the sponge still, scrape them into the garbage before going to the sink. Pieces of solder will clog our drain. Do not let solder go down the drain in the sink.
3) Begin by cutting a piece of colored, plastic coated wire and stripping the plastic coating off the last 1/2 inch of each end.
4) Thread each end of the stripped wire into holes on your practice board.
5) Test your iron's tip by "tinning" it. Cut a generous piece of solder (about a foot long). Touch it to the tip of the iron. It should begin melting immediately. Coat the iron's tip with melting solder so it looks shiny. This protects your iron's tip. Re-tin your iron's tip often to protect it (once every 5-10 solders).
6) Now you are ready to connect your wire to the board. Holding the iron at an angle, poise the tip above where you want the solder to go and touching the wire, but not the board. Push the solder on the tip so as it melts the drop of molten solder covers the hole and fastens the wire in place. Practice this a few times.
7) Once you have the hang of that, try desoldering. For this you will use the blue desoldering tool. Figure out how it works to suck up molten solder.
8) Using your iron, heat up the solder on a board and use the desolderer to suck off the solder. Timing is everything here! Again, practice makes perfect. Remember, if you put all your pieces in the right place, you won't have to desolder much during the construction of your circuit project.
There is no
homework for this station, but you must turn in a self-assessment.