Appendix 2: Soldering Tutorial...........................................................................
Appendix 2: Soldering Tutorial
ve got a pretty good soldering station that I inherited from a company that I
worked for that went belly-up. They coul n’t pay me for the last month’s work I
did, so they let me load up on equipment which was either generous of them or
saved them from paying to have it hauled off. But since this text is trying to get
the most educational value for the least educational buck, I thought I’d get the
cheapest soldering iron I could find and see if it would work well enough for
student use. The iron in Figure 40 was less than three bucks from JAMECO and
worked just fine.
First warning: these things get hot, cause fires, and char skin. If you burn yourself
more than once, join the club. Some of us are just harder to train. Saying don’t set
up your soldering station near anything flammable, seems silly, but remember, my
nickname is Smokey Joe and there are reasons for that.
Second warning: the solder has a rosin core and produces a nice trail of smoke
that contains God-knows-what kind of chemicals and heavy metals. This smoke is
very intelligent and will head straight for your nose. If you want to see real magic
at work, try changing your position and soldering techniques to avoid the smoke:
nothing works! Smart smoke will find you. Use a cheap fan to blow away from
your soldering area and share the toxic crap with everybody in the room.
I’ve also included solder wick on the JAMECO list. This is braided copper wire
and does what its name implies, it wicks solder. Just stick it to the bad glob you
want to remove, heat it up and watch the power of capillary action and note that
your are holding the copper between your thumb and forefinger about one inch
from the tip of the soldering iron which quickly teaches you that copper is a poor
insulator. Yeouch... is a common soldering term.
I’
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