8 March, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Soldering 101

The back of my board showing the soldered components

Today I had my second induction lab in the Engineering workshop. Last week we learned how to construct a circuit on a breadboard and today’s lab was all about the art of soldering. Again my session was scheduled for 10am and I made it just on time before the lab started. The teaching assistant who was leading the workshop was a Chinese man (I didn’t catch his name) who, from the sounds of it, has been running these labs for quite some time. He gave us a demonstrated tour around the soldering workshop and explained all the different machines. He then sat down at one of the tables and taught us how to solder a component to a circuit board. The brief instructions can be summarised in a few steps:

How to solder a component to a circuit board:

1. Insert the legs of the component (eg. resistor) into the holes of the circuit board.
2. Place the tip of the hot soldering iron so that it touches one of the component legs and the copper track on the circuit board and hold for a couple of seconds.
3. Using your free hand, move the end of the solder coil towards the tip of the soldering iron and gently press in until the solder melts.
4. Allow the molten solder to fill the hole and encompass the component leg before removing the coil of solder.
5. Leave the tip of the soldering iron in place for another couple of seconds before removing.

Don't I look groovy with my safety glasses on!

At each of our workstations, we had a coil of solder (with its own flux), a Weller solding iron with a temperature display, a magnification overhead lamp, a fume extractor, a box of tools (that we didn’t end up using) and a metal sponge to clean the soldering iron tip. We got to solder random resistors and capacitors to a holed circuit board just to practise, as well as solder an IC chip to the board as well. We also learned the different ways to remove solder, including the copper wick and the suction pen tool thing. Overall it was a pretty fun lab and I’m looking forward to designing and soldering real circuit boards that actually do something!

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