Soldering Tutorials

April 14th, 2008

My Weller WES51 arrived today (w00t!), and in celebration, I thought I’d compile a list of my favorite soldering tutorials around the web.

How to Solder Correctly: An excellent starting point, thanks to a detailed seven-minute video and lots of close-up images.

Soldering Tips (PDF, 284K): Ten pages of required reading by Tom Hammond, with advice on tool selection, tip tinning, component positioning, and solder types. Lots of great diagrams for all of us right-brained learners.

Basic Soldering Guide: From Everyday Practical Electronics magazine, discusses tool selection, soldering methods, and — perhaps more importantly — de-soldering!

Soldering Basics: This detailed tutorial from SparkFun.com includes several short videos and lots of pictures, then lets you really get your hands dirty with step-by-step instructions on soldering up a basic RS232 shifter board kit.

Surface-Mount Soldering: More and more components and ICs are shrinking in size and doing away with through-hole pinouts. Just go easy on the coffee and you too can solder SMDs!

Basic SMD Soldering: A whopping 8-part solder-a-thon from SparkFun. Starts with tools, moves into surface-mount soldering techniques, then takes it up a notch with hot-air rework — for when you mess up.

Solder Paste and a Toaster Oven: When you have a large batch of PCBs with surface-mount parts, it could be time to ditch the iron and warm up the oven.

Hacking up a Reflow Oven: More crazy antics from the kids at SparkFun. Take a shiny new $50 toaster oven, rip the guts out and throw in a microcontroller. Insert pasted PCBs. Bake for 4 minutes. Let cool and enjoy.

Solder Paste Stenciling: Before those suckers go in the oven, you gotta get the goop on somehow.

Stenciling and Reflowing: With your host, the ladyada herself, making it look easy.

Did he say “Reflow Skillet?”: No cash or time to build an oven? Shell out 29 bucks for a cheap electric skillet and be on your way to SMD heaven. Now these guys have really gone off the deep end.

Soldering Forum: Still not satisfied? Ask all your soldering-related questions on Curious Inventor’s forum.

Let me know if I’ve missed anybody!

electronics, soldering / Brian

Reader Comments Add your own

1. Pinsky | April 22nd, 2008 at 11:24 am

Nice list. I will have to try this soldering skillet…making pancakes and soldering at the same time…i can picture it now…Lead and Blueberry pancakes. And if you ever use ‘w00t’ again I might be forced to hit you with the skillet.

P.S. Are violent threats allowed on this comment board? I haven’t read the TOS in a hWhile.

2. Brian | April 22nd, 2008 at 12:16 pm

Here at PL, since we provide no real “service,” we have no official “terms.” Violent threats and flame wars are to be expected as a result. Somebody’s bound to get pwned at some point. (I kill me.)