Suggestions on soldering on electronic boards.

My roomate is currently working on a project wherein one step he is trying to rework snes controllers to use in an arcade style cabinet setup. We had one we thought was finished a few days ago but stopped working for some reason today. After taking a look at the soldering points it appears as if the board was burned/over heated a bit and might have led to premature failure. Now for the question, does anyone have any suggestion about how to soldier on these type of boards? For example: wire or soldier type. I was thinking that the best route would try to go with somethig that had a low melting point to try and keep damage to a minimum. However, I am pretty inexperienced at this and looking for advice.

Melting point isn't that critical, the most important clue is to use the right tip on the soldering iron and use it correctly.

For small solder points, use the pointed tip. Wait for the soldering iron to heat up, put it on the solderpad and in contact with the wire. Let it heat up for about a second, then apply solder on the other side of the wire (realtive to the soldering iron) and let it flow towards the heat.

For larger solder points, use the chisel tip with the same technique.

Also, make sure the solderin iron has enough wattage. 15w for small work, 25w for larger soldering.

Oh, and when something goes wrong, remove the soldering iron, let the solder joint cool down before you try again.

Lookslike I better grab an old mobo for solder practice.

Practice is key with these types of things, good luck, and good soldering

Sometimes it's better to use an overpowered iron, like when trying to get a pin to stick to a huge ground plane, you're often better off trying to do it with a 75W "soldering poker" rather than a 15-30W precision iron.

Way I solder small connections is to coat the wire with solder then press it against where i want to solder it to, then i press the tip of my iron to the solder on the wire and let it drip down onto the contact. I'm a bit of a noobie when it comes to soldering though so this might not be the best way.

I used to do it like that too until my father-in-law showed me how to do it best:

Use a 'third-hand' (friend, clip, etc) to hold the wire against the desired soldering point, then take the solder in one hand and press it at the desired soldering point along with the wire to be soldered. Then take your soldering iron and (depending on exactly what you are soldernig) either hold the soldering iron to the wire or the object being soldered to, until the conjunction of the wire & solder point get hot enough to melt the solder. At that point just feed solder as needed while still keeping the soldering iron in contact with either object.

There are lots of ways to do it, but the key is to heat up the wires being soldered as opposed to heating the solder. The solder flows and forms a better bond that way.

If you still have trouble, I suggest using a bit of soldering flux. It can make tricky jobs a whole lot easier.

I learned it as a more general method for various situations - indirectly heat the solder. Heat the surface you want to solder and touch the solder to the surface - it will melt and flow towards the heat source, with no problems of solder sticking to the iron instead of the intended point.

Also, to improve heating, 'wet' the iron tip with solder - just enough make the tip look smooth and shiny...no large blob. Doing this help the iron more efficiently transfer heat to the contacted surface (much like thermal compound between a CPU and heatsink).

damn, you put that in so many less words than i could, haha thanks.

Here is my take:

heat up iron, use a wet sponge to clean, and then tin the tip (put some solder on it), repeat if needed.

twist the wire as much as possbile (if its not solid-core) and put some solder on the wire.

Now, sometimes if i am soldering into a hole, i will fill with a solder blob. Then with iron in one hand, wire in the other, melt solder and stick wire in at the same time, then let cool. hasnt failed for me yet.

Otherwise, I place some solder on iron tip, and hold wire there while i put solder from tip onto the connection.

Finally, if it is a SMALL wire, and very close to others, etc, I will cover the connector in superglue. This helps hold it in place, and provides more support. This worked GREAT for my PSone LCD mod.

just my 2cents