When you think of electronic engineering, soldering may be one of the first associations that come to mind. Many of our Adafruit boards are fabricated through a bulk soldering process called wave soldering or go through our Adafruit selective soldering machine. But there are several special boards that we personally hand solder additional components, like microphones or antennae.
To give you that extra edge of confidence, Make: and Marc de Vinck came out with this nice, slim booky-book, Getting Started with Soldering – A Hands-On Guide to Making Electrical and Mechanical Connections, that includes a cool forward by our “Ladyada”. With these two experts breaking the basics down for you, you’ll be “cross-stitching with molten metal” in no time!
While your first couple of times soldering may feel a little intimidating, it gets much less scary as you gain experience points. Soldering is very handy (pun intended) to have in your savvy set of life skills, and the sense of accomplishment is palpable!
Contents
What Is Soldering?
Other Types of Soldering
The Difference Between Soldering and Welding
Soldering Electronics
Basic Soldering Tools and Materials
So, What Soldering Iron Should You Purchase?
Soldering Iron Accessories
Getting a Grip on Your Work
A Summary of Tools
Materials
Project: Portable Mint Tin Fume Extractor
Let’s Get Soldering
Preparing Your Soldering Iron and Workstation
Soldering Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs)
Trimming the Wire Leads after a Successful Soldering Connection
Connecting Wires or Components Without a PCB
Troubleshooting and Fixing Mistakes
Common Mistakes
Different Ways to Remove Solder
Repairing Lifted Pads
Advanced Soldering
Tools
Materials
How to Solder Simple Surface-Mount Devices
How to Solder a Multi-lead SMD
When Something Goes Wrong–Fixing and Removing Components
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
