10 Soldering Tips to Instantly Improve Your Soldering Skills

what's up everyone in this video I'm going to show you 10 tips to instantly improve your soldering skills let's get started [Music] before we get into the tips I'll quickly talk about the basic equipment you need for soldering one of course you need a soldering iron too you need some solder and then three you need something to extract the the fumes from the solder any soldering iron will do the job as long as it can get hot enough but if you plan on doing a lot of soldering I highly recommend you getting a soldering iron with a on/off switch and one that you can adjust the temperature a good soldering iron to last through a lifetime versus a cheap one will break all the time you have to keep replacing them a good soldering iron will make the job cleaner easier and fun I got this Weller W ESD 51 about 20 years ago when my school was changing equipment so I got this one used but this thing is still going strong and I would probably be still using this if my friend didn't give me his WD 1002 this is about a $400 soldering iron it is discontinued I'll probably have this dishonouring on for the rest of my life this is a really expensive soldering iron and it heats up really quickly but if I were to buy a soldering iron today it would be the Weller we1 zero one zero n/a it's a 70 watt digital soldering iron and goes for about a hundred bucks as for the solder goes use a rosin core solder if you use a rosin core there's really no need for flux because of rosin core is exactly as it sounds the core of the solder is hollow and it's filled with rosin so rosin is a is a type of solder so it's like killing two birds with one stone when you use this it'll melt the solder and then the rosin will come out and kind of like flux the solder and help it melt really quickly solder contains small amounts of light so you don't want to be breathing in that smoke I highly recommend using some kind of exhaust extractor or even just a simple fan to blow the toxic fumes from your face a small solder jobs not gonna kill you they don't give you a nasty headache for the rest of the day enough about equipment let's get started if you've never sought it before you're scared of messing something up or just unsure of your soldering skills no problem follow these 10 tips to instantly improve your soldering skills tip number one start with a clean tip a clean tip will transfer heat much better and give you a cleaner joint simply just take a wet sponge or a coiled wire ball just wipe the excess solder off or if you're in the field or in a pinch just give it a nice tap on the table to remove the excess solder tip number two use a cone tip rather than a wedge tip I feel like the wedge tips are great for batteries okay for medium size wires like motors and but they're really hard for small wires like FPV wires but the cone tip are good for motors good for batteries and really good for fine wiring I just feel like the cone tip are just an overall more versatile tip to use tip number three pretend all wires and pads before soldering it'll make everything so much easier melted solder bonds to solder instantly much faster than solder to wire tip number four use high heat what destroys battery pads is the amount of time on the pad versus the amount of heat on the pad 800 degrees works well for battery cables all the way down to small tiny FPV wires but if your soldering iron can do 850 850 is best for big fat battery cables tip number 5 use the shortest amount of time possible using high heat will let you melt the solder quickly so you could get the job done quickly just remember you want high heat for a short amount of time not low heat for a long period of time on the solder pad because that's what destroys solder pad tip number 6 soldering small tiny wires like fpv camera wires make sure the pad and the wire are pretend melt the solder on the pad then just quickly push the wire into the melted solder remove the heat and hold the wire steady until it cools tip number 7 for medium gauge wires like motor wires it's similar to a small gauge wire preach in the wire and the pad melt the solder on the pad then place the wire where the melted solder and the tip meet when the solder melts remove the iron and hold the wire still until the solder cools tip number 8 big fat battery cables this is the one that scares the most people but it's really not that hard it's similar to the medium gauge wire you preach in the wire preach in the pad you melt the solder on the on pad and then you just put the wire where these melted solder and the soldering iron touch and then you just wait for the solder on the wire to melt once it melts you want the entire ball of solder to be liquid and then you remove the heat and you wait for the solder to cool without moving the wire tip number nine a solder joint that doesn't have enough solder can come off the pad a joint that doesn't have enough solder will look bumpy or you can see the strains of the wire to fix this just simply add more solder tip number 10 a solder joint that has too much solder is not a good thing either a joint that has too much solder will look big and blobby or you'll see like these spikes coming off the solder to fix this use a solder wick to remove some of the solder or just take a hot soldering iron and wipe away some of the solder just remember these 10 tips next time you build your quad and I promise you your bill will be cleaner faster and easier if you found this video helpful it really helped me out if you give me a like put a comment in the comment section let me know what you think of this video and I'll see you in the next one peace

Channel: FlightClub

Views: 533,173

Rating: 4.8677011 out of 5

Keywords: soldering tips, soldering, building, fpv quadcopter, drone racing, flightclub, soldering iron

Id: FTYDSCUUDSQ

Length: 5min 45sec (345 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/sharinganuser]

That's good shit, I was doing soldering for my last job on microchips, but I always wondered how it worked with wires. Good to know that it's pretty much the exact same skillset.

[u/lord_terrene]

This was great, I thought I knew what I was doing but some of the techniques shown are definitely an improvement on what I've been up to. Also, time to pick up some solder wick!