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My 1st Soldering


thedude

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I bought my first Soldering kit! Yay! That stuff stinks. Just had to share

You are not supposed to breathe that stuff in. Its toxic. Get a fan or something to draw away the fumes while working.

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build your self a soldering station if you plan on doing long solder projects

for me, I have a large magnifying glass attached to a one of those flexi lamps ( yep i know, ghetto :) )

and for air flow, I have a small 40mm fan blowing a soft wind at the work area (the fan goes in front of me, in between me and the work area, and in back a 120mm fan (pulling the fumes away (all hooked up to a cheap 12v power supply (pretty much a 12v adapter with home made fan connectors :)

it is a cheap setup but it gets the job done especially when doing surface mount soldering and having to deal with those annoying tiny pins

(someone should make scented solder :), just imagine, your soldering and theres no airflow and the room is sealed, well instead of the annoying solder smell, you can get vanilla scented solder :) jk ) solder may cause cancer but that doesn't mean you have to suffer through the bad smell to get it :) )

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build your self a soldering station if you plan on doing long solder projects

for me, I have a large magnifying glass attached to a one of those flexi lamps ( yep i know, ghetto :) )

and for air flow, I have a small 40mm fan blowing a soft wind at the work area (the fan goes in front of me, in between me and the work area, and in back a 120mm fan (all hooked up to a cheap 12v power supply (pretty much a 12v adapter with home made fan connectors :)

it is a cheap setup but it gets the job done especially when doing surface mount soldering and having to deal with those annoying tiny pins

(someone should make scented solder :), just imagine, your soldering and theres no airflow and the room is sealed, well instead of the annoying solder smell, you can get vanilla scented solder :) jk ) solder may cause cancer but that doesn't mean you have to suffer through the bad smell to get it :) )

Sounds like something that would be interesting for a hak5 segment.

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My 1st kit came with Soldering Iron, Holder with Sponge and spool of metal.

My 1st mod is soldering 5 points on a Parellel Printer port to a serise of transistors so I can control a RC Car from my PC. And to put everyones mind at ease. I wasnt really breathing in the fumes. When I open my soldering package I wondered "What does it smell like" so right there with a open package I took a big sniff LOL.

@Razor512

Like the sound of your setup. I am defintly going to set up a dedicated work area like yours. Cheap is good.

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Been doing electronics soldering for years, haven't had a problem with the fumes from the fluxes I use. Probably a good idea to use good ventilation, but you're not going to fall out of your chair if you catch a wiff of the flux burning off. It's certainly less noxious than solvents like acetone and MEK.

For fine electronics soldering, I use a Weller WESD51 station with an ETS tip. I use Kester 285 core .015" 63/37 solder. I run the soldering temps 550-650F. I get really good results with that and have been able to solder .5mm pitch TQFP components without issue. If you over-solder something, try a desoldering braid like Tech-Spray Pro-Wick #1. That stuff works really good with 63/37 solder. For flux cleanup, I use plain-ol' 99% isopropyl alchohol from the drugstore. You can pay more for 99.9% from an electronics supplier and it's safer for components, but I haven't had any trouble using the more inexpensive stuff.

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Congrats on the soldering. I myself have been into electronics all my life but only soldering for a couple of years. Like CraigHB said if you breath in some fumes, as i usually do accidentally when soldering you won't right there and then die. I usually just put in a window fan to suck out the fumes but i recently saw a picture that someone posted here of a little computer fan mod to use for Blowing the fumes away. Its a REALLY good idea and so i did the same and it works great. The Weller soldering stations are very good and i highly recommend them to anyone wanting to get into soldering.

Keep up the great work and it would be nice to know if anyone else has made some projects/mods...i'll post some of mine if i feel there good enough.

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Gtz m8 :) Ive also only this past week started soldering. I bought Herbie the Mousebot kit that was on the one of the earlier episodes of Hak5 and i also got an EnigmaE. Not sure if this will be a bit hard for a first project but we will see :)

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Its not so much the fumes from the solder thats the problem, not after a little exposer. Its accidently touching the plastic surrounding a component thats the killer. I was once soldering a small switch i slipped and hit the plastic with in seconds i had the biggest head ache ive ever experianced, i honsetly thought that i was screwed, went outside to try breath in as much clean air as i could, with in an hour i was thankfully fealing better. Definatly recommend a fan

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