Soldering. Anyone who tells you it’s easy is wrong. :P
Was soldering a mod board to a Sega Mega Drive, but ended up getting solder on the cpu’s contacts and needed to get a second one. And it was a pain getting the wires to bind to the traces.
Soldering is easy if you have the right tools. Those old school solder irons with the ceramic element dangling inside a metal tube suck balls. Get yourself a direct heat iron like the pinecil and some flux and it’s SOOOOO much easier.
It sounds like you’re talking about Weller style irons and the ones where the part you hold plugs directly into the wall are quite terrible. However, they are an industry standard and most soldering stations will use a Weller tip. I have a knock off Hakko 936 that’s like 15 years old now and cost me $25 and it solders like a dream.
I’m talking about all of the older style soldering irons, including like that Hakko. The Pinecil is $25 AND solders better. Once I switched to a direct heat iron I can never go back. The difference is HUGE.
They are closer to $40-60 after shipping, not $25. I have been using a $10 Weller for a lot of years, with proper technique I have never been able to notice a difference in my joints or difficulty in soldering. I prefer my Weller for some jobs because it simply has more thermal mass. Stuff like repairing the connections on a 3D printer hotbed would be impossible with a Pinecil.
Soldering is easy like writing is easy. Meaning it’s pretty tricky actually, but after you’ve been doing it every day for years you forget how hard it was to learn.
Source: I’m actually pretty terrible at it, I have soldered stuff over the years but very rarely and never developed the skill. I got good enough to be able to say “I can solder” and I am confident enough to make attempts at tricky stuff, but I expect many failures along the way. Still, even with that it’s easy to feel how more regular practice makes it feel like second nature.
I had to solder in design and technology in secondary school. I have dyspraxia which is a disability which affects hand eye coordination so it was bitch to solder.
I feel your pain. I just soldered my first solder adding an arcade joystick button as a killswitch on my guitar. It was not nearly as precise as soldering a board and it was still a PITA. Us humans just don’t have enough hands.
Soldering. Anyone who tells you it’s easy is wrong. :P
Was soldering a mod board to a Sega Mega Drive, but ended up getting solder on the cpu’s contacts and needed to get a second one. And it was a pain getting the wires to bind to the traces.
And yes, I probably was doing everything wrong.
Soldering is easy if you have the right tools. Those old school solder irons with the ceramic element dangling inside a metal tube suck balls. Get yourself a direct heat iron like the pinecil and some flux and it’s SOOOOO much easier.
It sounds like you’re talking about Weller style irons and the ones where the part you hold plugs directly into the wall are quite terrible. However, they are an industry standard and most soldering stations will use a Weller tip. I have a knock off Hakko 936 that’s like 15 years old now and cost me $25 and it solders like a dream.
I’m talking about all of the older style soldering irons, including like that Hakko. The Pinecil is $25 AND solders better. Once I switched to a direct heat iron I can never go back. The difference is HUGE.
They are closer to $40-60 after shipping, not $25. I have been using a $10 Weller for a lot of years, with proper technique I have never been able to notice a difference in my joints or difficulty in soldering. I prefer my Weller for some jobs because it simply has more thermal mass. Stuff like repairing the connections on a 3D printer hotbed would be impossible with a Pinecil.
Soldering is easy like writing is easy. Meaning it’s pretty tricky actually, but after you’ve been doing it every day for years you forget how hard it was to learn.
Source: I’m actually pretty terrible at it, I have soldered stuff over the years but very rarely and never developed the skill. I got good enough to be able to say “I can solder” and I am confident enough to make attempts at tricky stuff, but I expect many failures along the way. Still, even with that it’s easy to feel how more regular practice makes it feel like second nature.
I had to solder in design and technology in secondary school. I have dyspraxia which is a disability which affects hand eye coordination so it was bitch to solder.
I feel your pain. I just soldered my first solder adding an arcade joystick button as a killswitch on my guitar. It was not nearly as precise as soldering a board and it was still a PITA. Us humans just don’t have enough hands.