MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: One thing I've learned is my soldering skills still suck.

> flux is your friend. When you use flux and your iron is hot enough (but not too hot
> on a PCB!) the solder will actually flow to the solder point. Also tin the wire and
> the solder point.
>
> Dip the iron in flux, then touch solder to it. The tip should "grab" some solder and
> be coated in it.
>
> Dip the wire in flux then touch it to the iron and watch it soak up some solder (add
> a dab more solder if needed)
>
> brush (with a brush or Q-tip) flux on the solder point and to the same.
>
> Then brush more flux on both the tinned wire and the tinned solder point, and heat
> them together. Done.
>
> My hardest lesson was about DE-soldering. It's actually quite hard to melt a good
> solder joint with just a hot iron. Even when using too much heat. The trick is to use
> flux, and melt MORE SOLDER onto it. The extra, liquid solder will melt the old joint
> like it was nothing.
>
> Before I grasped that concept, I tried like hell to remove a wire from something and
> became impatient. Too much heat plus a *Very light* tug on a wire... and I pulled a
> solder pad right off of a PCB. Doh!

All good advice. I had been doing multiple things wrong. Already I'm sure my next solder day will go better.

You're so right about DE-soldering too. I was heating up the solder and gently tugging on the wire for so long the wire got too hot for me to keep holding it... and STILL didn't get the old wire off. I hated to do it, but I said "screw it", and cut the wire, and soldered new on top of old. I'll go back and try to clean it up right now that I know better.