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Wear safety glasses Wear pants Wear close-toed shoes Do not eat or touch face without washing hands Wash hands with soap before leaving lab
Lab 04: Soldering
A brief intro about soldering:
Soldering is the process of heating metal, usually lead, to use to melt onto and bond wire to a conductive surface. Rosin, also known as flux, is used to help the transfer of heat and solder from one metal surface to another.
Safety in lab is important, and to achieve that, we followed 5 rules to help keep us safe.
Lap Joints
Lap joints are used to join two exposed ends of wire together to form a strong connection.
A proper lap joint should have both wires flush against one another with enough solder to cover both and not leave any air gaps in between the two wires.
Below is an image of my lap joint I soldered during lab. Mine was ok, passing the pull test, where force was applied to try and pull the two wires apart. It looks dirty due to the limited number of scrub brushes available to clean off the tip of my soldering iron.
Through Hole PCB Joints
Through hold PCB joints are used to connect wires, resistors, capacitors, and other electronic components together.
The ideal joint should be volcano shaped covering the entire pad. It should be shiny to show that heat was evenly applied and that the joint was not disturbed while it was cooling.
Reflection:
The lap joint soldering was just as difficult as I had remembered from doing it last year in lab. It is something that would ideally use 4 hands to make work, and the helper hands are a poor substitution in this case. They do not hold the the wires in place securely enough, and they allow for them to wiggle out of place when trying to apply the solder, which makes the joint brittle. Unfortunately, I did not find a better way to do it in the little time I had, which left my lap joint with much to desire.
The through hole PCB soldering was much easier, taking way less time for a way better finish. I am lucky to have had soldering experience before this lab that made it such a breeze. I soldered together my very own FPV quadcopter which required 22 solder connections, 14 of which you can see below.
I was able to solder on a resistor in less than two minutes, with most of that time coming from reflowing the solder until it was a perfect joint.
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