Soldering
•Key principles of making good joints:
–Everything needs to get hot
•Circuit board, component, and solder
•Certain circumstances can make this tricky
•Solder will “wet”or flow over all clean, hot surfaces
–Work surfaces need to be oxide-free
•Use flux to “burn off”contaminants
•Small components are easy to master
–Mastery of chopsticks to pick up single grains of rice is the equivalent dexterity required for 0603-sized (~millimeter scale) components
Getting it Hot
•Sometimes it seems like the board or component is not getting hot
–Two common problems:
•Connected copper or component has a large thermal mass
–Solution: wait longer (count to ten or so before applying solder)
•Insufficient thermal contact of iron to board
–Soldering iron “tip”has a tiny contact area (<< 1mm^2)
–Solutions
»Adjust iron angle so more contact is made
»Add a drop of solder to iron tip to dramatically increase contact area and therefore heat transfer efficiency
