HOW TO SOLDER! (Beginner's Guide)

what's up guys welcome to happy mod i'm brandon and i'm chad and we're gonna get right into this i hate long interest [Music] [Applause] we are going to learn to solder today and i picked three different case scenarios the first thing that we're gonna solder is the header pins on an arduino we're going to solder a variety of components on a pcb and the third thing is we're going to learn how to join wires together and tin the wire tips once you know those you pretty much do most soldering jobs you'll do in hobby electronics

well i'm excited because i need to learn how to solder yes you do before we started i just want to go over a few safety items first things first let's make sure we protect our eyes i got you some goggles there go ahead and put those on and you want to make sure that you're working in a well ventilated area if you're in a tight confined space you got to pull the fumes away somehow you want to make sure you're not next to anything flammable and also none of the things that were about solder plugged

in or powered up make sure that you put your solder away where your cats or dogs or animals can't get to it it often contains lead and you want to make sure they're not biting it or getting it in their mouths which brings me to my next point you want to make sure you wash your hands afterwards ingesting lead just isn't a good thing the first thing that we're gonna solder is the header pins on an arduino the reason i have a breadboard here is it's the easiest way to hold it what i like to

do is add the header pins in here just hold them you know with your fingers line it up to the breadboard and then you know gently push it down so now what it does it holds all the pins straight so you don't have to worry about it okay now that we have our first project ready let's grab our tools we want to get a nice soldering station in this case we got the the weller wes51 the next most important thing is the tip you want to make sure that you have a nice little chisel tip

some people like the conical tips i don't like the conical tips for most of the soldering because it doesn't quite heat fast enough for a lot of these components you know what else is also important what's that the solder ah yes it is so we use a 60 40 blend that means it's 60 10 40 lead however lead is unhealthy they're trying to phase that out the problem is the non leaded solder is a much higher melting temperature and the lower the melting temperature the little bit easier it is to work with we like to

use 700 degrees because you want it to be hot enough to to heat up the components that you're soldering to if you set it exactly at the melting temperature and you touch the soldering tip to a cooler device you're going to have a bad time well it's just going to cool the tip down and you're going to meet somewhere in the middle and it's not going to be hot enough to melt the side okay the size of the solder i typically use is .025 or .031 inches this is called a flux core solder and that's

the most common you'll find out there if you could zoom in on this through a microscope you would see that there's a tiny little hole that runs through the center of the entire thread of solder and in that hole is flux flux helps clean the surface of whatever you're soldering so it adheres all right well so i'm tired of just talking chad let's get soldering all right first thing we need to do is we need to tin the tip of the soldering iron and what that means is you want to dip it in the gold

yeah you dip it in the brass filings or use a wet sponge then you want to take a flux core solder and you want to add it to the tip and the idea is that you totally coat the tip and solder and then you're going to wipe it off again but didn't you just wipe off what you just did with that yes why no that's a really good question flux cleans off the um oxidation and then this the excess solder kind of pulls away all the junk oh okay gonna add a tiny bit of solder

as you touch the part that you're gonna solder you add the solder make sure it flows and then pull away the soldering iron this is a really important piece of information i think once you get this it's really going to help the whole soldering thing click what you're doing with the soldering iron is you're touching it to the two surfaces you want to join together but here's the important part both surfaces need to be hot enough to melt the solder you actually have to use the soldering iron to heat those two surfaces hot enough to

melt the solder then you bring the solder in and you'll see it adhere to all the surfaces properly once you get that it makes the whole soldering process so much more enjoyable and easier to understand so soldering iron touches both components that are being soldered together you bring in the solder let it melt let it adhere pull away the soldering iron a lot of people have a tendency to do this let me show you they'll touch to the solder points add the solder and then they pull both away and what happens is sometimes the solder

hasn't quite seated and hasn't quite adhered to both surfaces hasn't gotten comfortable yet yeah it's exactly touch the objects add the solder remove the soldering iron touch both objects add the solder remove the soldering iron you want to give it a shot absolutely are you feeling like you got this absolutely i got my wrist ready all right here you go touch both components very good actually that was really good for your first on-camera soldering thing and then you clean the tip after you can keep going no you can keep going you have to touch both

components that you're soldering together if you really want to get a good bond very good so let me show you something if you're ever in doubt you can do what's called reflow what's that it just means that you re-solder so you touch it to it again and you solder it okay now sometimes you can accidentally bridge two together so look at that there's a big old glob oh my goodness and they're stuck together what are we gonna do i i do not know so it gives me an opportunity to introduce a thing called solder wick

oh do you see that do you know what can you take a guess what that is it's like an eraser yeah that's actually a good analogy but it's just copper wire but it has flux built into it oh okay so what we're going to do is we're going to touch this solder wick to the top of where we want to remove the solder so it goes between the solder and the soldering tip and you're gonna just hold it there and you're gonna see it wick up the solder do you see that yeah see how it's

just pulling it away and then when you pull it away all that solder went from your joint very nice into the solder wick and then you just cut off that yep you just cut that off and you know you have the rest to use later you have lots you can make mistakes you can and i always want to encourage people to make mistakes no yeah i mean you're going to make them naturally but i want to encourage people to not be afraid to make mistakes right so it's good to always have solder wick on hand

absolutely but what if you're a cheapo and you don't have solder wick on your well guy fortunately there's always a workaround all you need is like a um maybe like a thicker gauge wire that has a lot of copper strands so we're just gonna just gonna cut a piece of that off you just take like a little a little section maybe you know give it a little twist looks like a little paint brush let me try to bridge our connection again and just see if we can do the same thing pretending we don't have solder

wick so oh that's an ugly oh no chad i don't have any solder wick what am i gonna do well i think we have some thick wire let's give that a shot okay i'm just gonna do the same thing i did with the solder wick i'm just gonna put that on there heat it up and i have this i haven't done this in a while and it is it actually did work but ideally what you want to do is add a little flux to this this is flux and what you guys earwax i know it

looks like this wax flex is kind of disgusting looking so if you add just a little bit of flux to your wire it helps everything flow so we're just going to come back over here and see if we can remove the solder oh that worked much better yep so that just uh that solder just wicks right up in there perfectly so if you don't have any solder wick all you need is some correctly stranded wire and some you know okay all right so there we go so now it's all done we pull it out and

examine your work absolutely you did pretty good yeah it does look a little a little dirty well you're talking about all that ear wax yeah yeah so that's flux it's flux left over from the um the core of the solder okay should we get rid of that or well yes actually you should if you leave it on over time it will cause your components to corrode because it is a type of acid so it's eating away that oxidation okay i always like to keep alcohol in a spray bottle that's how i drink it and you

might do not drink isopropyl alcohol as long as it's not plugged in and it's not powered alcohol will not harm your electronics oh and it's nice because it evaporates fairly quickly just spray some isopropyl alcohol on there give it good brushing and then use a cloth i like to use these microfiber cloths because they're lint free you have lint all over the place but if you want to be more professional about it you can use flux off this episode what do you say to me it pretty much works the same yeah just spray it on

oh i like that sound and then wipe it down there you go very nice now it's really clean yeah so now we're gonna do a pcb there are a few different ways that you know people approach this one way is you know people like to put in all the components and bend the wire leads out so they don't fall out and then they flip it around and solder everything i like to go a couple components at a time and i like to solder anything from the top that i can because then it keeps it seated

when you turn it over so i'll just show you my method you're welcome to you know go in any order you know preference that you prefer so we're we're holding it in this case this is a nice little pcb holder what's nice is you put it in there oh you can spin it around and it's completely adjustable you can loosen this and extend it but you can work on either side very easily if you don't have that in this case i made my own i used a couple of alligator clips and a heavy piece of

steel and some armature wire and i just made this little they're called helping hands and you can buy stuff like this as well but these are nice because then you know you can still rotate it if you build it like this and it's really heavy so it doesn't move around that's the biggest thing is you don't want it to to be moving around yeah and then if you really don't have anything at all you could just you know put it on a surface that you're not concerned about you can use like a silicone mat because

silicone mats won't uh burn but you typically want it to be elevated because when you put your components and the wires come out the other side so we're gonna start with the components that can be soldered from the top and that means that when i put like the transistors in here for instance see how you can see both the leg of the transistor and that solder pad so you can you can solder that from the top but something like a capacitor you can't see it at all so you have to solder it from the other

side all right let's start with our transistors on a transistor it's a little difficult because uh you know to get to that center lead but either way you should be able to do this so start clean your tip add just a little bit of solder make sure things are clean and then we're going to touch the leg of the component and the solder pad for about two seconds and then we're going to bring in the solder give it another two seconds pull it away we have a nice little solder joint there okay and then let's

get the other side there we go and then we're gonna try to get the center and it's probably best for touch it on one side and bring the solder on on the other there we go let me take this one out i just want to show you with one component we're gonna flip this around and then we're gonna cut off the legs this is very important to wear glasses during this because when you cut these they shoot off like little metal bullets sometimes like this has been pretty good but sometimes like you cut these and

they just shoot right past your head don't have your mouth open no definitely don't so there you go that's the first component so what i'm going to do is i'll do one side and then i'll let you do the other gotcha all right so there's your transistor there you go if it doesn't sit perfectly straight you can just get one side and then you can once one side is tacked in you can bend the bend it too okay position it straighter very good you i think you've been practicing i am not trying to get under

there there we go now that it's soldered in place what do you got to do next got to flip it over yeah do the bottom yep so let's make that happen snippy snip snip and these are just flush cutters they're called flush cutters because the the bottom side of it's flat so you can actually cut flush to a surface so next let's do a component that you can't solder from the top so these are potentiometers we're just gonna put that in right there see how it fits right in there and two of them yep it

takes two of them and we're gonna put them both in and then underneath i'm just gonna bend these outward that way when you flip it over you can see that they're they're bent out so it holds it in place so now you have to do is solder those you want to do it uh you you do one i'll do the other all right you get nervous no no no no no not neat it's okay to be nervous no no no no i'm not nervous over here ready touch both the component and the solder pad add

the solder remove the soldering iron oh i just did them all oh well i can cut it off there's more soldering is actually pretty fun so i got started i didn't want to stop once you start you can't stop it's better than pringles less filling all right brandon you've done pretty good so far i think i'm just going to hand my soldering iron over to you and let you finish up the project [Music] very good you built something i did you get to keep that brand and that is yours you get the sweet i'm gonna

put it inside my fridge okay don't run to your fridge we've got one more thing to cover what if you gotta join two wires together i wouldn't know what to do i wouldn't know where to start i mean you could twist them true but i'm assuming you have a better way i do so remember this this is what they call helping hands yes you can use this to hold stuff in place like that or however you want this is the simplest way to join two wires together just twist them and add a little bit of

solder there you go and done of course it's all exposed so you want to add heat shrink to it yeah so you can fold it down and then i'm going to get a bigger piece of heat shrink it's like a little band-aid for wires it is and you put that on there and then very quickly you don't want to you know burn it you just want to heat it up now i'm using a torch you don't have to do that you can use a heat gun or just a regular lighter so that method that i

just showed you it works and you get a very good bond and it's very strong however it's it's bulky and that's not really clean so i'm going to show you another method you typically want to take your heat shrink and put it on ahead of time because if the other end of the wire is connected to something you won't be able to get it on after you solder okay yeah so what we're going to do is we're going to add our heat shrink we're going to use our helping hands here and we're going to do

what's called tinning the wire oh so what is that tinting the wire means you're just adding solder to the wire and i just usually start here add a little bit as it melts and make your way up down now typically the end of the wire gets a little bulky so then i'll cut off the tip okay right there okay so wire number one is ready wire number two you wanna twist the strands together we're gonna do the same thing we're gonna tin this wire and then again the end gets a little bit bulky so we're

just going to cut that off give a little haircut yep and then what we want to do is we want these two wires neck to neck here guys so you want them you want them like this once you get those two wires together you hold them with your helping hands gotcha then you just take your soldering iron once they're together you just but you just want them nice and clean and then what you can do you bring your heat shrink and it goes over the wire and look how clean that is very clean so now

you got a nice clean bond right there you want to give it a shot oh yeah i can do it all right join these wires together you can choose the method okay [Music] all righty i'm slapping on the old helping hand yep helping hands are very helpful [Music] um okay so sorry to interrupt but you want to touch it more in the middle oh in the morning yeah because the tip it takes longer to for the heat to travel okay so if you start at the tip then the heat has to travel inward which is

very difficult for it to do that so start in the middle of it and you don't want to start too close to the shielding because then it starts melting the the sheet okay there you go just you need to hold it on longer let it warm up there you go now add the solder there you go see how it went right in perfect there we go a little rocky start but we got here we got there so now you have your two wires joined um one thing i would do is you don't need like that

entire section you just need to make sure that you know there's a healthy bit of it connected and then just get rid of the end garbage that way you got a nice clean end gotcha so then just straighten it out and bend that joint to one side or the other oh i didn't know you could touch it still it's not hot no it it cools down after about 10 seconds well not even 10 seconds probably sooner all right and then just go ahead and just push this and then wave it around yeah there you go

yeah it goes really fast so get the other side too no that's good you're about to gotcha cook it for dinner there you go so there's your first wire joint all right so i think you learned a lot in a short amount of time you did exceptionally well for a beginner's side thank you yes but we're going to be doing a lot of projects and i got to make sure you know what you're doing absolutely so i i would say if this was a test you passed sweet and it was a test gotcha there was

a lot of a lot of tips here to cover a lot of you know things to remember but really at the core of it it's first in last out with the soldering iron that means touch the two components that you need to solder together so they can get hot enough to melt the solder make sure the solder flows in and gives you that nice little concave joint and then remove the soldering iron only after you see that happen you want to make sure you wear some kind of glasses goggles something protect your eyes absolutely don't

breathe in the fumes all right is that it i think that's it we've got a lot of great tips here watch the video a couple times if you know if you want to learn something comment below if you want to learn something additionally what we taught you today is good for the hack make mod projects and most hobby electronics yeah absolutely and if you guys learned anything like i did make sure you leave a comment below also hit that subscribe button if you haven't already drop a like on the video thank you guys so much

for watching i'm brandon i'm chad and we'll catch you next time something i want to mention you know what also wear pants hot solder on the legs wasn't ready for you i'm wearing two pairs of pants well that's good he's doubly and i'm wearing a diaper