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Soldering n00b

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I use old shipping boxes - always have extra laying around. :) Usually they are used for cutting, they make a nice surface without slicing up my plastic folding tables - the plastic folding tables can't really be damaged. Although their surface is textured, and they do seem to maintain a consistent layer of vaseline. :eh?:
 
Always use any cardboard boxes for cutting but I love my mat too much! :) I can't wait till I have the money and the time to have tables coated from benching...
 
I'd say that's a good description, not pretty :p
Not dead is perfect though!
 
My iron is a 35W model. It came with one of those repair/service kits that include computer tools, that your family gets you for a birthday or holiday. I'm not sure if its any good or not, I wouldn't know... But the sucker gets hot on the handle part, so in between trying not to touch the hot end of the iron, I'm also constantly shifting my fingers on the handle so I'm not burning the same finger all the time. I may buy another iron just so I have another reference point... And I may buy some solder, as the stuff I have I have no idea what it is. It also came in the kit. It doesn't melt reliably it seems - sometimes it will melt in a couple seconds, other times it takes 15s. The whole process seems unpredictable, and hard to manage. I feel like its harder than it should be.

I couldn't really tin the tip of the iron. I could melt some solder with the tip, but none of the solder would stick to the tip. So I heated up the pad, toasted some surrounding PCB a bit, put a dab of solder on there, heated the wire a bit, put the wire on there, melted the solder on the wire together with the dab on the pad... Definitely not an application that would work for a small surface, but fortunately this fix has an area the size of a landing pad so I guess I got it done.

Anyways though, it got done, and the card runs. I also bought a glue gun so I could secure things to the board better, so that will come in handy in the future also. Going to paint up this card today, and hopefully run it soon. I have ran a 4890 before, which had no cold bug and was just really enjoyable to run... If this card is half as good as the 4890, I'll be a very happy boy.
 
they have one at radio shack that has a 15/30w switch on it works great all around also comes with a spring stand and everything for like 20 bucks i think? i have one and love it :)
 
My iron is a 35W model. It came with one of those repair/service kits that include computer tools, that your family gets you for a birthday or holiday. I'm not sure if its any good or not, I wouldn't know... But the sucker gets hot on the handle part, so in between trying not to touch the hot end of the iron, I'm also constantly shifting my fingers on the handle so I'm not burning the same finger all the time. I may buy another iron just so I have another reference point... And I may buy some solder, as the stuff I have I have no idea what it is. It also came in the kit. It doesn't melt reliably it seems - sometimes it will melt in a couple seconds, other times it takes 15s. The whole process seems unpredictable, and hard to manage. I feel like its harder than it should be.

I couldn't really tin the tip of the iron. I could melt some solder with the tip, but none of the solder would stick to the tip. So I heated up the pad, toasted some surrounding PCB a bit, put a dab of solder on there, heated the wire a bit, put the wire on there, melted the solder on the wire together with the dab on the pad... Definitely not an application that would work for a small surface, but fortunately this fix has an area the size of a landing pad so I guess I got it done.

Anyways though, it got done, and the card runs. I also bought a glue gun so I could secure things to the board better, so that will come in handy in the future also. Going to paint up this card today, and hopefully run it soon. I have ran a 4890 before, which had no cold bug and was just really enjoyable to run... If this card is half as good as the 4890, I'll be a very happy boy.

Sounds like a bad iron, and lead-free solder. I made the mistake of actually buying a cheap iron and then getting lead-free solder. Everything I work on is a debacle. :bang head
 
yea 35 watts is a bit hot for sensitive electronics 15-20 watts would have been more then enough,from looking at the pics i would guess it has a pretty blunt tip on it to:)

might want to get a new iron if you have plans on doing this again
glad you were able to get it working:)
 
Ya, I'll probably pick up that one wagex mentioned at radioshack.

I don't plan on doing a whole lot of this, but I'm sure I'll find use for it again at some point. And I want to know if I suck that bad, or if I'm using all the wrong stuff.
 
the right equipment makes all the difference:)
i had one of those 15/30 watts irons from radio shack in the past they work ok and will be tons better then what your currently using.

they also have a butane powered one at radio shack for about the same price that has alot better temperature adjustment a finer tip and can be used anywhere with no wires=)
its great because it can be used wirelessly out in the garage without worrying about killing the house hold pets with lead fumes lol.
 
You absolutely positively need leaded, rosin core, solder.
Lead free is a pain in the rear to work with.
Leader is far, far, far, far, far easier. Don't eat it. Don't eat before you wash your hands well.
Lead doesn't vaporize well, so it's mostly burnt rosin you're avoiding breathing. It's not exactly good for you either though so don't breath the fumes if you can help it, a computer fan does a good job of Elsewhereing them. Ideally out a window. I solder on my porch sometimes.

Wattage wise, the higher the wattage the faster the tip will get hot. The hotter the tip the less time you need to melt the solder, but also the faster that ball of solder will get really hot.

Too cool and you have to leave the iron on the leg of something sensitive too long and it fries.
Too hot and you burn the pad off the PCB.

For reference, I have one iron that is temperature controlled (I love it), and another one that is a straight 40w. I use both on electronic stuff, you just have to be careful about how long you leave the thing on the pad if it's a small pad.
The copper slab you were soldering on there is unlikely to come off unless you're really trying.
 
Semi-on-topic, what's the ideal temperature for this kind of work? My soldering station can set temp but I have no idea where to set it. It defaults to 350 (°C) and that's where I leave it. It works fine, but is there a better temperature to set?
 
Varies :p

The pad he was soldering to is fairly beefy, with a medium-pencil tip I typically need ~750f to make it work well.
With a Big Fat Tip, 600f-650f would do it.

For tiny stuff I typically use ~720f.

This all assumes you're soldering to something that used RoHS solder. The first thing to do in a RoHS situation is add some leaded solder to it, it makes things a lot easier.

Essentially, use what works. If it works well at 350c, use 350c. If it's having a hard time making things melt, crank it up and/or leave a glob of solder on the iron for more mass.



Fair warning disclaimer: I'm entirely self-taught here, read a couple web pages and then started soldering and figuring out what worked for me. I may be Doing It Wrong, officially speaking :p
 
naa 350c is fine for most jobs maybe a little lower for fine stuff and higher for larger surfaces.
a few tips for getting temps right.

if the solder is left flat grey its called a cold joint,it means the solder wasn,t hot enough and may not have fully bonded with the copper

if you over heat the solder you'll have a bunch of blackish flakes on the surface of the solder and possibility of pad lifting from the board, the strength of the pad/traces depend on a few things whether they used black oxide/or shadow(graphite) after they silk screened the board before plating,the other thing would be how much copper they put on during plating,if it was plated in industrial gold the plating is very thin usually and will lift off easy from to much heat.

something elts to watch for is pin holes which is literately pin holes in the solder between the pad and the circuit, these cause all kind of chaos on a board depending on were there at and can cause a unstable capacitor effect and mess with all kinds of stuff on the board.

another tip is to drag your iron up the wire/lead after soldering it to the pad to keep from creating big spiky solder joints and helps keep from getting pinholes as well.

those are the main things to watch for other then the obvious bridged circuits,solder connecting two near by pads creating a bridge.
 
For the "spiky solder joints," I usually take some side cutters like this and snip off the protruding part of the solder. Is it the best way? Probably not. Does it work? Hasn't failed me yet. You just have to be careful to not cut too much or overly stress the solder joint.

Edit: In your pics I.M.O.G., I think I spot a loose bit of solder than could cause some fun for that card. It's on the green "spot." Not sure if that really is solder but it does look like it.
 
Edit: In your pics I.M.O.G., I think I spot a loose bit of solder than could cause some fun for that card. It's on the green "spot." Not sure if that really is solder but it does look like it.

Ya, I painted up the card with LET after I was done, so not sure where that loose chunk went as I forgot to grab it after I saw it in the pics, but it probably just fell off on the floor. :)

The card ran well. Memory clocks stopped at 1050MHz, but I didn't screw around much with memory voltage yet, which is what the mods are for... So hopefully I can find more headroom. I could really use something like 100MHz more on the memory, but that is probably rather greedy.

Core stopped at 1025MHz with 1.362V applied. Tried a bit with 1.4V but that didn't get me any further.

It likes cold down to -130C, then starts artifacting pretty heavily, so no full pot benching on it.

My bench scores so far are lousy on it, as I was benching without hwbot access (their server was offline for about 24hrs), but my clocks and certain subtest results indicate with some LOD tweaks, a driver switch, and maybe one other change, I should be able to put up a couple top scores with it. :rock: If the memory gets further, it should help.
 
For the "spiky solder joints," I usually take some side cutters like this and snip off the protruding part of the solder. Is it the best way? Probably not. Does it work? Hasn't failed me yet. You just have to be careful to not cut too much or overly stress the solder joint.

Really you should add some flux to the joint and reflow it.
 
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