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Tell me where to get a good soldering iron and thin solder wire


GradualGames

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I'm really new to soldering. My goals are:

 

-Solder contacts from a new atari joystick cable to a new joystick pcb

 

-Solder a broken wire inside a paddle controller

 

-Remove and replace a difficulty switch

 

-possible other mods

 

What do I need besides just the soldering iron, wire, and wick? Or is a pump better? Do I need any sort of clamps or anything to make holding a circuit board easier?

 

I did a tiny bit of soldering when I was 13 and totally destroyed what I was working on. Now that I'm 34, maybe I'll be more careful.

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1- get one with temperature adjustment and use less than more.

2- Use the right soldering tip. I prefer a flat one myself.

3- Both a pump and wick are useful and they're quite cheap.

4- As funny as it sound, when desoldering, add a bit of solder or flux first, it helps.

5- Don't use plumbing flux!

6- a third hand gizmut is quite useful but you can also tape your part to your workbench.

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If you are new to soldering, just get a cheap soldering iron first. There's no point spending a lot of money, unless you intend to be doing it all the time. For most modding and repairs I just use a $5 soldering iron. You can get thin solder at Harbor Freight, Radio Shack, Lowes, most electronics or hardware places. The wick works fine for desoldering most things.

 

After you've done some stuff with the cheap iron and decided you can do it, then buy the expensive stuff.

 

I'm saying this because I'm poor, not poor like $50,000 a year. I mean poor like around $10,000 a year. If you've got the money and don't care to spend it, then by all means get the best stuff you can, it will make a difference. If you live on a budget like I do, go as cheap as possible while still managing to do the job. :)

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I bought a Weller from Amazon. Oddly enough I bought it January 8 2017. I like it, it's perfect for beginner and will last you a long time.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000AS28UC?psc=1&ref=yo_pop_mb_pd

That looks pretty nice. The price is right too. I can see this being one I could afford to upgrade to eventually!

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those things are a standard stick iron connected to a lamp dimmer, for 40 bucks there's a gazillion temp controlled hakko knockoff's (for for about 12 bucks you can get a stick iron and a lamp dimmer at the hardware store lol)

 

Can you please link your source? I'd be interested in this if it worked.
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http://www.instructables.com/id/10ish-DIY-Variable-Temp-Soldering-Iron-Controller/

 

I used one for years before getting a temp controlled one

 

A temp controlled iron will get more or less to a predefined tempature and sit there, a stick iron will sit there and continue to heat (in theory until something breaks) all the lamp dimmer does is reduce the wattage available to the iron so you can use like a 40 watt model and have it heat up at the rate of a 15 watt iron, or if it starts getting too hot (ie the solder sticks more to the iron and not the parts) you can back off the power until things settle down, and when they settle down too much or you need to solder a big slug you can crank it back up

 

but it will not maintain a constant heat, it just gets hotter and hotter at different rates, so your fiddling with it all the time

 

instead of wiring your own I know I have a lamp dimmer up in my kids room that just plugs into the wall and you plug a lamp into it similar to this

 

https://www.amazon.com/Lutron-TT-300H-WH-Electronics-Plug-Dimmer/dp/B0000BYEF6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1515459368&sr=8-1&keywords=inline+lamp+dimmer

 

which is plug and play, and claims to handle 300 watts (not that an electronics iron would be nearly this high) just when I made mine back eons ago in high school we had some lamp dimmers in my parents garage and some dual gang boxes cause my dad did a lot of electrical work,he was a journeyman electrician before nam, and after decided to go another route, but we always had plenty of spare electrical parts around tween that and ham radio, then later computers

Edited by Osgeld
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  • 2 weeks later...

I attached a pic of what I use right now for arcade and pinball repair

as well as doing game console repair

 

the hot air station is a cheap knock off(cheap is relative here lol ) of the hakko ones but works great

my solder sucker is a hakko and its sooooooooooo nice to not have to use a stupid manual bulb/pull solder sucker (really helps prevent any lifted traces ) and solder wick is useless except for clean up after.

 

 

as far as cheap options

I have like 10 of these at my store for general use

http://www.microcenter.com/product/391342/Low-Cost_Soldering_Station

 

they work well and have a good fine point and for 20 $ they get the job done

 

and to remove solder before I got fancy I always just used these

https://www.radioshack.com/products/radioshack-45-watt-desoldering-iron

 

 

 

if you want professional equipment and have the bucks to afford it I got my hakko here and I think the do online sales as well

http://www.eskc.com/

post-63035-0-12809700-1516649193_thumb.jpg

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I had a hot air station like that (but a real deal hakko) for a few years at work, and it worked great ... until it came to surface mount parts

 

I dunno how that one is but the hakko used something similar to a fish air pump, which was a constant puff puff puff puff at a high rate, so no matter how low you put the air it just blew my stuff off the board. So at home and now at work I use these, which use a blower fan and provides a constant stream (which can still blow your stuff off the board, but its much more manageable)

 

since they are so cheap we buy a couple boxes of them for work, so when they crap out (and its almost always the heater core) NBD, but mine at home gets used quite a bit and has been going fine for ~4 years now. The replacement heater cores are like 12 ish bucks and you can just get a whole handle assembly for under 20

 

you can get digital models, but I personally find digital temp setting a pain in the butt if I am working on random boards of drastically different quality ... or want to switch from soldering to melting hot glue blobs or heat shrink ... its just easier to turn a knob half way down than to hold a stupid button for 20 seconds

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For soldering irons with temp control, are the ones that have the control built right into the handle instead of a separate control box any good?

 

Some. I have a TS100 open source (ARM CPU) soldering iron which is pretty good. Someone managed to run Tetris on it. LOL

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