CHAPTER 22 ■ SOLDERING AND CONNECTING
I find my soldering skills improve with each robot. Sometimes I’ll get overconfident or sleepy and mess
up a few joints, which is frustrating and tedious to find later. So, be patient with yourself; give yourself time
and plenty of experience to learn how to solder.
Protecting Soldered Joints with Heat-Shrink Tubing
Heat-shrink tubing is marvelous stuff. It’s flexible, hollow plastic that slides over solder joints or other
exposed connections. When heated, the tubing permanently shrinks firmly around the joint, protecting it
against the elements and errant contact with other circuits. Additionally, the tubing provides strain relief,
which prevents the wire from breaking at the otherwise uninsulated location near the solder joint.
You’ll find heat-shrink tubing so valuable that you’ll use it on all of your robots. I use^1 / 16 -inch and
(^3) /
32 -inch inner-diameter tubing the most often.
Obtaining Heat-Shrink Tubing
See Table 22-1 for a list of^3 / 32 -inch inner-diameter colored heat-shrink tubing needed for this project. For a
wider selection, I recommend that you pick up the kit instead, which includes a seven-color assortment of
eight diameters. Heat-shrink tubing is also available from many other electronics suppliers.
Table 22-1. Color Heat-Shrink Tubing
Supplier Part Number Price Length Inner Diameter Color
Digi-Key FP332W-5 $1.98 5 feet^3 / 32 -inch White
Digi-Key FP332K-5 $1.98 5 feet^3 / 32 -inch Black
Digi-Key FP332R-5 $1.98 5 feet^3 / 32 -inch Red
Digi-Key FP332Y-5 $1.98 5 feet^3 / 32 -inch Yellow
Digi-Key FP332G-5 $1.98 5 feet^3 / 32 -inch Green
Digi-Key FPC-KIT $94.95 5 feet^3 / 64 -inch to^1 / 2 -inch Black, Clear, Blue, Green,
Red, White, and Yellow
Figure 22-7. Array of 256 diodes requiring 816 solder connections