Getting Somewhat More Serious 113Experiment 12: Joining Two Wires Together- Use your helping hand to align the first joint. Push the two pieces of wire
together so that the strands intermingle, and then squeeze them tight
between finger and thumb, so that there are no little bits sticking out. A
stray strand of wire can puncture heat-shrink tubing when the tubing is
hot and soft and is shrinking around the joint. - The wire that you’re joining is much heavier than the 22-gauge wire that
you worked with previously, so it will suck up more heat, and you must
touch the soldering iron to it for a longer time. Make sure that the solder
flows all the way into the joint, and check the underside after the joint
is cool. Most likely you’ll find some bare copper strands there. The joint
should become a nice solid, rounded, shiny blob. Keep the heat-shrink
tubing as far away from the joint as possible while you’re using the solder-
ing iron, so that heat from the iron doesn’t shrink the tubing prematurely,
preventing you from sliding it over the joint later.
Figure 3-59 Figure 3-60 Figure 3-61
Figure 3-62 Figure 3-63 Figure 3-64
- When the joint has cooled, slide the heat-shrink tubing over it, and apply
the heat gun. Now repeat the process with the other conductor. Finally,
slide the larger piece of tubing over the joint. You did remember to put
the large tubing onto the wire at the beginning, didn’t you?
Figures 3-59 through 3-65 show the steps all the way through to the end.
If you have completed the soldering exercises so far, you now have sufficient
basic skills to solder your first electronic circuit. But first, I want you to verify
the vulnerability of components to heat.
Figure 3-65. Completion of the shortened
power cord for a laptop power supply.