Soldering and Electronics Workbench

This guide will provide you with an introduction to soldering. You may or may not have already some experience, but its always good to practice more.
Soldering is a work of art on its own and you can only master it by practicing a lot. Don’t wait to solder a day before a deadline, start early with soldering small projects. In this key guide we will solder some wires without electronics to get started.

We will cover in this guide:

Introduction

Do’s

Don’ts

Through hole & SMD soldering
In this key guide, but also mostly what you will be working with, it through-hole soldering. Through hole soldering uses components with leads that goes into holes drilled in printed circuit boards or proto boards. In the consumables in the Hatchlab we have components with leads. This is great for prototyping and soldering most projects.
SMD stands for Surface Mount Soldering, where you solder components on the surface of the board. Sometimes these components are smaller and makes it easier to create small electronics boards. However, it is another level of soldering to master, and isn’t advised to start with. But when you have mastered soldering well, it might be interesting to research this further.

Solid core and multi-stranded wire
We have two different types of wire in the Hatchlab.
Stranded wire is much more flexible than solid wire of equal size. For this reason, stranded wire is used when the wire needs to move around frequently, in a robot arm for example. Conversely, solid wire is used when little or no movement is needed, such as prototyping circuits on a breadboard. Using solid core wire makes it easy to push the wire into a breadboard. Trying to use stranded wire on a breadboard can be very difficult, as the strands want to separate as they are pressed in. (Information form the this Sparkfun tutorial)

More information on this, wire thickness, strip a wire and how to crimp can be found in this Sparkfun tutorial

Tools in the Hatchlab

We have some ready work stations set up with tool board and soldering iron. There are some additional kits on top of the shelves. Please keep things tidy and organized.

solder setup

  1. Power Supply

Must read resources

There are many resources and videos to be found online, feel free to check others to get a better understanding.

Key Guide

To go through this guide you must have read through/ watched all the must read resources above. We will create a little key chain made from proto board, solder and different coloured electrical wire. The wires must be connected at all points and we will use the multimeter to test the continuity of the connection. Solid core wire is easier for creating connections across the board.

What you will need:

solder setup

Creating your keychain

  1. Wet the sponge in the soldering iron workstand using a wash bottle (you are less likely to spill the water if you use a wash bottle). A dry sponge will damage the tip. Use the wet sponge and brass sponge to clean the soldering iron tip between connections.

  2. Cut wire down to size.

  3. Strip wire at each end.

  4. Place the wire through the perfboard with the plastic coated wire NOT on copper-plated side.

solder setup


solder setup

  1. Solder the wire to the associated copper pad. Consider the quality of your solder connections (between the wire and the proto board). The illustration pictured below goes through some Do/Don’t practices that help with creating quality connections. The solder we use contains flux so don’t worry about adding flux manually. Go here for more information about flux.

solder setup

solder setup

  1. Repeat step 1,2 & 3 with a new piece of wire. When cutting the wire ensure that one of the stripped sides of wire will be able to reach one of our existing connections. Don’t directly copy this design - start placing your wires to spell your initials.

solder setup

solder setup

  1. Repeat step 4.

solder setup

  1. Bend one of the stripped wires over to reach the other copper pad. This is how we will create the connection. Use the pliers to help position the wire.

solder setup

  1. Melt the solder to create a connection between the two wires. Add more solder if needed.

solder setup

  1. Test the connection between the wires after every time you solder a new point using the continuity mode on the multimeter. This is good practice and will save you hassle in the future. (This can be seen in the photograph below)

solder setup

  1. Repeat all steps adding new wires until you have a continuous connection and the front design is finished.

  2. Leave your soldering iron with a little bit of solder on it (tin the soldering iron before putting it away)! It protects the iron from oxidation. For more information on Soldering Iron maintenance look at this instructables guide.

tinned soldering iron

Once you are finished please assess the result with a lab technician.

solder setup