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.
I've had tools, teachers, and time.
I can't solder or braze to save my fucking life, but I'll weld circles around you with oxy, stick, mig, or tig.
Doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me
I felt the same the first time I tried but it honestly takes a few tries to start getting it right. The kind of iron and solder matter a lot; the older ceramic core ones suck and the JBC/pinecil type are much superior. Part of the problem with the ceramic type ones is they have one setting - full blast - and not good temperature control. With a pinecil/JBC you can set the temperature to 300C and expect to get 300C. Too hot and it will boil off the flux before you're done soldering and you just get crud.
In terms of solder, leaded rosin core solder is the best. Don't worry about the lead, as long as you wash your hands. Use a brass sponge type thing to clean the tip frequently to remove crud
For through holes, I'd say get some veroboard off eBay and a bunch of cheap resistors and just start plugging away until you get better. Process is basically - have tip with a bit of solder, poke to pad and pin, put solder into joint and hold 1-3 seconds until solder flows onto pad and pin, remove tip. Putting some flux on in advance helps remove the oxides before soldering
For surface mount (side pads/pins), there are kits with cheap/obsolete/trash components you can just plug away at without fear of messing anything up. Soldering smt is a bit annoying but doable by hand without much training. the process is basically: tin one pad, use tweezers to place part and reheat the solder until the part is in place, solder the rest of the pads, reheat first pad to relieve stress.
Even for large parts, I used to have trouble with unsteady hands. If you are doing smt you really need a microscope or magnifying glass for anything smaller than 0805 - really helps with the visual feedback loop for hand positioning. A microscope significantly improved my dexterity and hand steadiness
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.
This year I went scuba diving for the first time! Also, I did my first job switch, been good so far but I constantly doubt my abilities. Also first time daily driving linux recently 😉
Cool. What is your job?
Screw R&D engineer. It's weirdly specific 😅
That's not nice. R&D engineers probably work really hard. Do you do more work on the head, or the shaft? I am legitimately interested by this.
I work hard but my new company seems to respect work life balance so far. So far I've been working more on the tip of the screw, but it depends on the goal of the project. Almost all of the features of the screw can be modified to meet the needs. A big part of the work is to verify that a change or innovation can be produced at a good quality level.
Elderly raising. I have elderly relatives that needed care and I've begun the process of fulltime care at my home. I was told this would be the easy version of being a mom (as if).
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
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