Soldering 101 - For Arduino Projects

in this video I'm going to be providing a simple tutorial to get you started soldiering in your electronics projects you may actually want to avoid soldering all together and use some of these wire jumpers we've got these I believe they're called dupont connectors we've got some small pins at one end we call those males and we have some female sockets at the other end and they go on to the pins now they are a good idea any circuit board that has pins and sockets we can get a way of using those and they're nicely colored like so there is a problem though certainly if you're getting these uno boards they do come with sockets already connected but you might actually find that you buy something like things will nanos which are a bit cheaper and find that there is no pins connected we're actually going to have to solder pins to the motherboard anyway so therefore you might as well pick up some basic soldering skills I say basic these are actually quite fiddly to solder to they are quite close together the pads and it is easy to get solder to flow in the wrong place but what we're gonna have to do is have a look at trying to minimize that and having a quick look at the basic equipment we're gonna need so first bit of equipment gonna need is soldiering on if we're going to do soldering obviously here I have a means powered soldering iron by turn it on it's actually temperature controlled we can set a temperature and we can see the current temperature so set of 400 Celsius and this is going up 162 plus now it goes without saying 160 to 400 Celsius on here is really really hot so if you go grabbing the hot end you will get burnt quite badly so we need to avoid dropping this we need to avoid handing it to someone and we need to avoid thinking is it hot or touch it to find out you could hover your hand over and you can feel considerable heat coming off the end of there whenever you're finished with it it always wants to go back into its holder you could of course go with a soldering on like this this is a gas fillable line we actually use a lighter to like the end like so the mantle at the end has a flame coming out of it what will happen is I will get hotter and hotter and hotter and eventually the flame will sink inside the mantle you may need to turn the gas pressure down to get it to do so takes a while to warm up advantage of a gas soldering iron of course is soldering anywhere that you have electricity disadvantage of a gas soldiering on is you do need to fill it with butane gas and there is no temperature control they are very very hot so what you'll find is your cook and burn sensitive component so it's much better to go over temperature controlled on the other thing to consider with a cast iron is it's incredibly hot and even sitting it down on this little built-in stand which is located here doesn't actually lift the tip very far from the surface and I have seen this one go down and actually melt a hole in a plastic surface see how close my finger is to the the heated element at this end so you want to be careful with a gas holding on the other thing to consider is they could explode if you puncher them or if you left them in a hot car and a hot sunny day they could actually pop open so maybe maybe not the other option is of course a battery soldiering on I don't actually have one here to show you but you can get rechargeable ions now that run off USB or actually recharge and they are a good option they usually have some form of temperature control in them the other items that you will need is probably a solder sucker you might be able to get away from it essentially this is a spring-loaded suction device and if we end up getting too much solder on a circuit board we can actually load it by pressing that down bring the nozzle down to some molten solder and suck the molten solder away very very useful some people recommend using solder wick we won't use solder wicken in our examples as well as the soldering iron you're gonna need some solder you will also need some wires we will probably end up needing some wire cutters and if you are feeling very flush you might go with some special wire strippers which I don't use as I haven't got any of the wire strippers but I do have something called an auto stripper if you're doing a lot of this work you might want something like this but they don't cost somewhere between 60 and 80 pounds so probably not recommended and they're gonna be doing this job a lot but I'll show you the action here essentially we place the wire in the end pull the handle and it strips the wire that being said the wire cutters I've just shown here do exactly the same job while I tend to do is hold them apart in a small V wrap my finger around and just push the insulation off some people with fingernail was actually fine they're running their fingernail around the installation of pulling works I do prefer the technique of bringing the cutter together putting the wire in the end pinch and hold of it but not cutting and then pulling the wire down into the V and that will actually pop the end off quite nicely why wise will want something quite small for the projects that we will be working on throughout this website but when it comes to solder we might want to consider the way using a lead-free solder so generally solder on a green roll is led free but double check it it is a bit more expensive and some people who have been sold it for a long time say it's a little bit more difficult to use but it is non-toxic quite a lot of the other solders are on a white red or blue roll contain lead and they will say that what they contain down here so this one contains some tin some copper there is also a chemical in here called flux which is derived from pine tree sap what that does is when you heat the metals up the flux flows and cleans the metals and it means that you get a really nice solder joint the flux is actually inside the solder you may wish to get a flux pin but really it's not required first kind of work here we see a selection of soldering tips as you can see they get progressively smaller these ones on this side are quite large including a soldering blade or a knife typically on this side one of them's got away from us that's too there this one on this side is very very small very small indeed and it has a little hook which allows us to get around corners so they all have different uses what you need to consider is that when you buy your soldering on some of the cheaper bigger soldering irons are very very large tips and it may not be good for the kind of work we're gonna do and here's a board for comparison we can see that this tip is way too big to be soldering these little tiny connections let's have a look at this one on this side much smaller tip will be easily able to get the tip onto these little tiny connections there about one and a half millimeters wide the next thing to consider with tips is when you buy them and they're brand new they have a plating on the end of the tip this plating is sensitive corrosion and essentially if you turn your soldering on with a brand new tip and leave it to warm up it will damage the end of the tip the other thing that you shouldn't do is get sandpaper or a file and file the ends of the tips down if you do you basically destroy the tip it will work okay but you will now have to file it more and more often the best thing to do when you get a new tip is turn the iron on heat the tip up and apply solder now to demonstrate changing of a tip in this particular iron we undo a screw here we take this housing off the tip can then be removed it's hopefully cold you take the new tip we slide it on put the housing back on and do it up fairly tight because we don't want it rattling loose now as mentioned this is a brand new tip so before we power the soldering iron on we need to take care of our tip so the first step of good tip care is to use your cleaning sponge sometimes you get a little metal mesh to clean with but actually the damp sponge is good now what we'll do is we'll actually dip the sponge in a bit of water squeeze out because we don't want water pouring everywhere it just wants to be moderately damn bit more squeeze it out there we go perfect place the cleaning sponge into the cleaning sponge holder second step is to turn your sole bring iron on at this point in the soldering iron tip will start to heat up and we need to prepare some solder take your soldering iron tip and gently rub the solder against the tip very very soon you will see that the solder will melt and coat the end of the tip we actually have a good coating of solder on the tip next step is to clean that solder off using our sponge just wipe it off but before we put the soldering iron away we need to recoat the tip so apply a good amount of solder to the end of the tip place it back in the holder and the soldering iron is there ready and waiting for the next time it's used the next time is used you may wish to clean the tip off before you use it but you will probably want to recoat the tip with some solder remember if you clean that tip off and pull it away clean it will corrode and when it corrodes you'll find that the solder will not melt on the tip this corrosion will often show up as a black tip and you will find it very hard for the solder to melt however cleaning of a sandpaper may improve things temporarily there ideally needing to be replaced bear in mind for this soldering iron here a new tip costs about a pound or two but if you buy more expensive soldering on made for use by professionals you could find that the tips can cost up to sixty or more pounds that's a tremendously expensive tip especially if it's only lasted a few minutes and become useless so always make sure you take care of your soldering iron straight out of the packet also remember a brand new soldering iron may produce a smell for a while it may also smoke essentially is oils on the end of this metal part burning off you probably want to avoid breathing in smoke from your soldering iron and when we do solder we will release a small amount of smoke which is generally the flux burning off you want to avoid inhaling that directly into your lungs prolonged exposure may cause irritation to your eyes throat and mouth it's best to do soldiering in a well-ventilated area or even better to use an extractor an extractor will generally be a fan mounted at the back of the desk which will suck smoke away from the area alternatively just having good ventilation in the room by having windows and doors open improves air circulation and reduces the risk of a reaction from the smoke that being said remember that lead-free solder is a lot less dangerous than soldering of lead if you are using lead which you shouldn't be you do need to take more care not to eat it not to get it on your hands and then eat not to get it on your hands and touch your mouth and eyes and you really don't want to be inhaling the smoke from lead solder because the temperatures here could be high enough possibly to actually vaporize some of the lead molecules and the lead molecules could find themselves into into your lungs which we really quite nasty so try and avoid that okay so we've got our soldering iron powered up the tip is hot we also have some fresh solder on the tip which will keep our tip nice and healthy let's get to Seoul during our first components in this example we're going to be soldiering some wires to an infrared sensor and that infrared sensor will then be connected to one of our nano BOTS while it is possible to solder to these three pins one two three directly what that will do is destroy the chance of being able to connect our DuPont connectors so in this example we'll actually flip the board over and we all soldiers the connectors on the back of the board here now as you can see there's not much to solder to so we're gonna have to be very very careful not to damage anything and we also want to get some good solder joints on spins well I tend to do in an example like this is used a small amount of solder and just refresh the solder on this I'm just going to apply a little bit more and melt each of those connections there the technique is to apply the soldiering iron first and then feed a small amount of solder in you need to heat the solder up locally before you apply new solder when it comes to selecting appropriate wires there is no law on what colors were use but typically will use red pink a bright color like that for a positive line will typically use something like blue black or gray for a neutral line or ground and then for a data line we can choose whatever color we have available this is what I've got on the Shelf so this is what I'm using here we're going to connect green to our output which is clearly labeled as out on the board we are going to connect our pink wire to the VCC which is our five volt supply line and we're going to connect a gray wire to ground which is our zero volt supply before we do that we need to strip a small amount of these wires off notice how short that bare-metal is on the end of these wires it measures about one or two millimeter long this is more than enough as opposed to this example where the ends are being stripped are now about 10 to 15 millimeters this is far too long what will happen is when we soldier to these connections there'll be way too much bare metal to wobble about and the chance of these coming into contact and touching is very very high you will find that most of these small electronic components are very sensitive and if wires come into contact like this or short out you will blow either your microcontroller all the sensors or both so if you do trim these a bit too long don't worry simply use your cutters and trim them down to size afterwards you want to be careful with your cutters that you don't end up cutting too deep into the insulation when we're stripping wires or what we'll find is after a couple of Wiggles these will snap off next step is to pre-tin our wires pre turning is simply the function of applying some solder to our wires before we try and solder them to our connection so all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bring the soldering iron tip underneath the wire apply a bit of solder and watch it stick to the wire same again apply the solder iron bit of solder apply the soldering iron feed a bit of solder notice I've got quite a blob of solder on the end of my solder tip but I did apply a bit more and that's because applying a small amount more allows the flux to flow over the wire at the moment there's no flux left on the end of the tip it's in the solder wire now that our wires are tinned we've also applied a generous amount of solder to the back I say generous and not arced out so it's a small amount really what we'll do now is have a closer look at how we join these together due to the fact that we already put some solder on the wire we've already put some solder on the connector we don't need to feed any more solder in we can just use the soldering iron touch the two together and they've joined now going to do the ground and notice because these bare wires are so short there is no risk that they're going to come into contact with each other apply the soul during tip like so it's joined if you're not happy with it try again but to be honest that looks fine and then finally we're going to connect this groundout we'll try and get a nice position on it oh very very true and fiddly really so if this is moving about use something to hold it down here I have my solder reel and I'm just gonna place it on my board and it will hold the board firm so I can kind of push my wire on there and it doesn't wiggle about of course I get a friend to help you but if you haven't got a friend a roll of wire works well what would days apply some there it looks like we could do have a small amount more so I'll actually come in on that last one and just apply a little bit more solder doesn't matter otherwise falling off because now I'll come in and finish that joint so we now have our three wires soldered onto the sensor it's always good to double check your connection so we've got pink to VCC we've got great ground and we have got green to out what we can do is have a closer look at them make sure they look good they're not industrial but they are good and I've given it a little wiggle and they've not fallen off which is always handy and the other benefit of soldering them like this is if we do damage this sensor or blow the chip it's very easy to remove these three wires again and had a new one in essentially we just touch the iron to it and lift the wire off and we've got the wire free you can stick the wire back on good in the event that you applied too much solder and bridge your connections out as we can see here I'm purposely joined to these connections you've got one of two choices one here is to try and use your soldering iron like a nine to separate them we can then clean that excess solder way onto our sponge or again we may wish to use the solder sucker so reload it what we're gonna do this time is bring our solder sucker down to the joint heat up the solder until it melts and use that solder sucker so pull that solder ways you can see we didn't do it in one go so I'm going back in again pulling it again and you can see we've now removed the excess solder one thing to know it should happen fairly quickly you really only want the iron in contact with the board and the joint for about three to five seconds at the most if you are down there for a long time and it's not sticking you've got one of two problems the connections are dirty or your soldering iron is not hot enough or possibly there is not a good flux in your solder so if that's happening and you see that these installations are colored plastics on the wire and melting and burning and the wires are getting very hot it's all getting too hot bear in mind we're not going to do this but if ever you need to solder these components on a tiny little board like this these components are sensitive to heat and you're soldering on will cook and damage them okay well that's all there is to it really we've sold the three wires to our sensor we're now going to look at the other end of the wire and we'll solder that to our Arduino as we look at the Arduino there's a lot of different pins on the top here in this particular example we're only gonna connect three but it might be the actually you need to connect fifteen or twenty wires so all I would probably do if I was planning to connect a lot of wires is actually preload these connections with solder bear in mind if you want to put pins in here later you should use a different technique you'll need to solder the pins in now if you put solder on one of these connectors and fill it up you will need to use something like a solder sucker to remove the solder so what we'll do now is try and remove that solder and it's a bit tricky we need to heat the pad up bring the soldier sucker in and fire the solder sucking you can see we've such that solder away I'm gonna continue and tin these so I'm gonna put my finger on the board hold it in place I'm gonna bring the iron down heat up feed a bit of solder and iron down heat it up and you see I'm putting the iron quite firmly in contact with this little metal pad or this little metal ring and once is firmly in contact I feed the solder underneath the tip towards the pad and it is all nice and hot the soldal stick if it's not hot enough it won't stick great so they're pre-loaded of solder that's gonna save us a job if we end up with lots of wires around this sport you'll find it quite difficult to get the soldering iron in there preload them remember we also need to put some solder on the end of our wires before we attempt to solder them to the board so we can just do that like so basically tuck that wire into the solder feed a small amount in it will suddenly stick then what we need to do is connect our red wire which is connected to VCC on the sensor that is actually going to connect to our five volt pin so if you can see five volt is over here we will heat that up now what I've got at the moment is too much solder on the end of my soldering iron so it's time to clean it off coming again add a very small amount of solder to the tip and carry on the mix on we're going to connect is ground and we'll take the gray wire down to this ground port and finally we're going to connect the sensor output to one of the digital pins and I'm going to connect it on this side of the board to digital pin two brilliant if you've got this far and you've successfully soldered your sensor up as shown in this video you are now ready to move on to infrared sensor module project one which is actually going to be an imporant switch so we actually bring our hand in front of this sensor here it will detect our hand and it will switch the onboard led on and off on this module so remember stay safe wear goggles use your extraction and try and keep the bare metal on these wires to an absolute minimum

Channel: Dan Sohan

Views: 36,518

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Id: ghx6S4lh4lg

Length: 24min 28sec (1468 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 13 2019