DIY - How To Solder LED strips - Many Tips And Tricks - Clean And Secure Connections!

[Music] hey youtube what's up welcome to this diy video about soldering led strips um first of all i hope everyone's doing fine i hear countries going back into lockdown we're also having a curfew here things are closing up again rules are getting more strict that's of course not a good thing but i just hope everyone's doing fine and yeah if you don't know what to do at home maybe you can start on some soldering so yeah here we go so for the people that are new to the channel um i'm actually a starting artist in barcelona this is one of the pieces um that i made it's the cyremid i will only make a handful of them to sell uh later on on my website and i also do epoxy paintings this is what i'm still working on this one is getting close to finish but yeah that's not what this video is about the video is about this all of this now there's a whole bunch of stuff here a whole bunch of different led strips will i i'll probably make a different video just on different led strips and their uses so yeah if it comes to tools for soldering led strips you actually don't need that much as you can see here in this shot there's even one tool here that you don't really need which is these um this is a gas powered soldering gun it's it's an amazing tool but it's actually more used to solder in hard to reach places like in a car or something plus the temperature is hard to control um for me i just use this very simple 30 watt a very cheap thing it cost me i think nine euros and the most important thing is just having a soldering gun that gets up to a good temperature with a very small tip and so these are the exact wires that i use most of the times just the simple rgb 0.25 millimeters and this is this is an amazing tool um you'll see it later in the video uh this is actually made in belgium very funny the country where i'm from um it's used to strip your wires this is this thing is just amazing it saves a lot of time for somebody who has to do a lot of uh soldering on these wires so yeah i can really advise buying one and then these are my two uh my two cutters my two pliers if i say this correctly both from milwaukee just amazing they cut like a knife through butter very very good ones um and actually one of the most important things is um so when soldering i use i use this actually it's it's a one millimeter it's it's not from this brand i just use this reel to uh to roll up a little bit because holding a big one like this is very it's very heavy and annoying to work with so just another small tip for you guys but probably the most important tip the grease i mean many people um actually don't really know what it's for or they they kind of use it wrong it's it's actually just used to put the tip of your soldering gun in to be able to displace yeah it's it's not on don't worry guys to displace the heat across your tip better to be able just to heat it up faster and to heat it up better um it's not you don't have to put your wire in and and then go solder and no that's not good it actually makes a worse connection having too much grease in your solderings and so before we actually really get started into the working and stripping and soldering of led strips um these are just two advices i can really give you so when your soldering gun is warm again it's not on don't worry guys um you do have to clean your tip you know it gets black and all kinds of dirt maybe some some isolation that you accidentally touched or something the way that i clean it when it's fully warm i just i use this moist just kitchen paper i see many people using sponges and and like really abrasive stuff like like sanding paper that's a no-no that's not good for your soldering gun you're going to ruin your tip very fast also these are more important so you really need these i think heat shrink tubing uh is the correct bird um i just bought an assortment in many diameters because i still kind of need to figure out which diameters i need the most but those are very very important to make nice connections to make them look beautiful and also to make them safe so yeah let's get into the work now so yeah first things first which is some preparation work as you see there are a few marks here and that's just for me to be able to quickly uh just put the strip to the size that i need and just cut them next one cut cut and so on so i stated before you can clearly see the lines where you can cut them now in many strips you will also find look let me just take a look here yeah you will also find the soldering points and some people have the opinion you can only cut them there and solder there that's not the case you can basically anywhere where you have these exposed copper strips you can cut them and put some soldering material on them and then just put them together so yeah this is how i do it's quite easy as you can see just nice and straight try to really get them in the middle um so that you have the same distances um and so one thing with these strips so these have a waterproof coating on them and i just gently very gently peel it off a little bit to expose the copper strip then just cut it off perfect so now these can be soldered on so now we have a few strips prepared as you can see the coating removed from the the tips to be able to get the soldering material on them very easy then your next step to take is uh preparing your wire so again rgb wire i use ones with a black ground instead of a white one because i just think it's much more nice and again yeah same thing so i use one of these um as a measuring tool you know to every time get the same size and as you can see it's quite small wires that i need um for this project uh so let me just see every time just number one number two number three and so on um so yeah that goes quite easy but for me my most favorite tool in this whole video is going to be this one uh it's a stripping tool from creator it's really good works very handy here you can clearly see the way it works it has a stop on it that you can just quickly change um the distance and this is to regulate the tension um of the device and just yeah i don't use the stop i am i tend to always strip a little bit more than needed because you always have the easy with these small wires it's just incredibly difficult to get the right tension every single time so i put my soldering on and then i just cut a little bit off to make things a little bit easier i actually uh take all these little wires apart um because just with with this small distance you're just going to have one whole lump of soldering material so i take all of these apart this will also make it a little bit easier in the future to solder them onto the strips and just a little piece of advice so this is how i do with my wires i just use a piece of tape i do one side of the wires and i flip it around stick it again to the bench and then do the other side and usually i first do my wires and then i do the tips of the strips um because you really don't want to be hanging too long with your soldering gun on your strips because you can easily damage an led or just even the tips can come loose um i mean these things are quite sensitive take your time be patient and it it can happen that something doesn't work sometimes so let's turn this one on and that's how i do it i turn it on i put it in the grease because the grease is only used to easily disperse the heat uh across your soldering tip that's literally the only use it has and be sure to have a wet paper towel ready okay let's get started okay guys so the soldering gun is nice and warm as you can see immediately upon touching the soldering material the tin itself uh melts now i do have to add you saw the smoke make sure you do this in a well ventilated place where a respirator if you need to um but yeah let's get into it so for the wires i try to do it always as fast as i can try to just to do a little touch-up you know just like that is already more than perfect um don't get big lumps on it you really just need to touch it very quickly these are already pre-tinned we're also going to put soldering material on the strips so let me show you the way i do it i also try to do it as fast as i can i put my tip on the outside of the strip and some soldering material inwards so as is absolutely perfect yep huh there you go guys it's not that difficult so here now you see the finished product of our preparation work so far um so yeah the reason why i didn't trim off these uh edges of the the tips is just because yeah after you put soldering material on them they're just much easier to trim off uh also you won't be pulling out anymore so yeah this just guarantees again a better connection and a better finish so the strips are looking good the wires are looking good i always put them like this i put i put them to color code and i just hold them in place with one like these um so yeah black is for the ground blue is for the backup green is data and red is the positive these are ws2815 led strips and that's why there are four cables you have strips with two with three um again that's something for a different video and before i'll get into the soldering i'm just gonna prepare this connector um to put on the beginning of the strip and yeah then we'll get into really um making them work the last step for preparation is um so i i mentioned these before i just cut little pieces and i put them on the tips where i put soldering every time so yeah all of our preparation work has been done um as you can see i've also prepared a connector to put on the beginning of the strip um but yeah that doesn't really matter for now uh the thing is just so let me show you get guys done uh yeah of course i always put some weights on the strips when i'm soldering and just yeah slowly steady there you go that's number one number two in place three and last but not least the positive all right nice so yeah this is how the strip looks now um everything is soldered together nicely i didn't heat up the the shrinking foil i mean i mean these things here because yeah first i perform a test and then after i heat these up um because you never know if you did something wrong if there's a bad connection um then you can always still go back very easy um and again yeah don't forget of course to turn off your soldering gun to clean your tip and yeah first i'll perform a test and show you guys if it works or not as you can see here the strip is just working perfect so which means the last step is just heating up those heat shrinking tubes so yeah this is our last step to take it is just uh simply applying heat to these shrinking tubes it's again a step you need to do like bit by bit uh try not to melt anything try not to damage anything uh just taking your time i use a simple lighter with a very very small flame and i just pass by several times uh strip up and down just like that perfect yeah it's looking very nice and then there's the last touch up so you have normally practically every led strip has the tape on its back so i just i remove this a little bit this this is really like one of those little details that makes a difference i just press this little bit and it's nice and sticky ready to mount uh so yeah i'll just continue on with the rest of the strip yeah and just like that we have a fully functioning strip that we have cut up and actually just put back together this means once you can get the hang of this you can really make them cut to size fit into anything that you can imagine of course this is just simple this is just everything in series once you get into more complicated wiring diagrams things get a little bit more difficult but yeah this is just nice and clean perfect to mount you don't even see the connections you still see the wires which is something i like yeah this turned out really good guys this turned out really good so yeah guys that was it for this video i hope everybody picked up something from it and i hope you enjoyed it as well um don't forget to leave a like or a comment and don't forget to subscribe because there's much more coming in the future and um yeah i hope everyone is taking care of himself and staying safe as well and yeah until next time guys bye

Channel: Studjo Infinity

Views: 72,157

Keywords: how to solder, how to solder wires, how to solder a led strip, diy soldering, how to solder cables, how to solder led strip, how to solder led lights, how to solder leds, how to connect led strip, how to connect led, how to solder led strips, ledstrips, how, to, solder, led lighting, what do i need for soldering, tools for soldering, led diy, diy led, soldering tutorial, soldering tips, led strips installation, led strip lights

Id: ANwpTAula0Q

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020