This weekend I soldered track. I put the iron on the track, slid the iron in the side grove of the rail to rest on top of the joiner, and heated it up until the solder slid in between them. I even got to the point where they didn’t look like a total mess.
But tonight I have to do something that has always made me feel that I am no good at soldering–connecting a resistor to a light bulb circuit.
It should be simple right? You hold the light bulb wire in one hand, the resistor in the other, the soldering iron in the other , and the solder in the other.
I know I’m missing some basic technique that everyone just assumes the lamest of the dumb mice should know.
One thing that will help is to make a mechanical joint first: that is , bend a small hook or loop in the resistor lead and wrap the end of the wire through the loop (stripped wire of course). This gets you down to 3 hands. If you use a third hand device with alligator clips on some adjustable arms (X-Acto and others) you are down to the 2 hands you normally use.
Make sure the parts are clean and don’t use any more solder than required to ‘wet’ the surfaces as excess solder can hide a bad joint. If the resulting joint is shiny, pat youself on the back ‘after’ setting down the iron. If the joint looks dull you don’t have a good joint. Try adding some flux and reheating it making sure both wires get hot.
Don’t get discouraged. I’ve been doing this for forty years and still sometimes wish I had a third (or even fourth) hand.
It also helps if you tin both pieces before trying to connect them. I have a trick that works every time. I have some electronic wiring solder that is very fine. When I solder wiring joints I wrap it around the joint and heat all three at the same time. Never had one not come out great.
ALSO…put a heat sink near the electronic part so you don’t burn them up…(i use alligator clips)…clamp them near the electronic part but far enough away from the joint you are going to solder so that you don’t solder the heat sink to the work…chuck
Mouse, you got screwed, where are your third and forth hands?
I agree, if possible, always use some type of mechanical connection to hold things together in a soldered joint. Cut the insulation cover off of some stranded wire and use the clean and bright individual strands wrapped around the joint to make a mechanical connection, then solder. Remember, with soldering, solder flows to the heat and a lack of heat and cleanliness, is the cause for most failures in soldered joints. The metals being soldered, need to be bright! Corrosion, oxidation and patina on the metals will keep the solder from bonding. So clean with a wire brush, sand paper or a file and get down to the bare metal before attempting to solder and you will be successful more times than not. Most times, if you have bare metal, flux is not necessary.
My little tidbit to add is get some heat shrink tubing when you have long exposed bare leads. These will prevent mysterious shorts later on. It’s cheap and easy to add also.
First slide the tubing far down the wire.
Do your soldering
Slide the tubing back up the wire to the exposed section, and apply heat from a small heat gun. Sometimes even a hair dryer will work.
You can get heat shrink tubing a radio shack or online fairly cheap.
There are some good tips here. I learned a thing or two myself.
Rails need high heat and as stated above, to be tinned and in conjunction with heat sinks. I just bought a two temp soldering iron (20w/40w) with holder and my life is so much easier and safer. The 40w setting is perfect for rails. I also use lead free solder as it’s friendlier and stronger and doesn’t oxidize.
When working with small electronics like soldering decoder wires, the tip size is a lot more important that the heat rating of the iron. I have a small 25W iron from Radio Shack that works well on small things. It’s a bit weak for track work, but I’ve used it to solder #20 wire to joiners to make terminal joiners, and soldered pairs of flex track sections together to make continuous curves without too much trouble. The track is the ardest - 25W really isn’t enough to keep the joint hot the way it should, and I need a larger unit, a 40W should work there.
Resistors and light bulbs are pretty robust, it’s not liek soldering the actual decoder, or an LED, those sorts of things can be fairly easily destroyed if you hold the heat on too long. The one tip up there is the best one - make a mechanical joint first. Resistor leads don’t twist very well, so siply twist the stripped end of the light bulb wire around the resistor leg, close to the body of the resistor (slide on the heat shrink BEFORE making the mechanical connection, it’s a little hard to get it on AFTER the joint is soldered [:D]). I find thatmy alligator clip helping hands is more of a pain then a help for things like this, I solder right against the bench - well, I have a sheet of poster board over it, so that takes all the knife nicks and so forth, just throw it out and get a new one when it gets too messed up, cheap desk pad. Anyway, you won’t set the paper or wood benchtop on fire, you need 451 degrees F to do that. Press the tip of the soldering iron on to the connection, making sure it touches BOTH wires. Touch the solder to HEATED WIRES, NOT THE TIP OF THE IRON. It helps to cut off short sections of solder rather than trying to handle the whole roll. Also, for fine work, use the small .032 solder.
Most of all, practice, practice, practice. Cut some wire, especially small decoder wire, and make connections just to practice soldering. It’s a lot harder trying to describe the process instead of actually doing it, but with practice it will
What I am going to be working on is a Proto 2000 SI Switcher. What I need to do is isolate a brass nut that holds the brushes from the frame and connect an orange wire from that nut to the DCC socket. In order to do that, I have to disconnect the wires from the DCC socket and reattatch them. I also have two lights that need resistors. One set of leads from the lights seems pretty short, and I have to find physical space for the resistor.
Frankly the part that concerns me the most is reattaching the wires to the socket. that is a pretty small little sucker. And as one person here so aptly put it, “I have Mr. Magoo eyes and Fred Flinstone fingers.”
Randy is right. Use a smaller, pointed tip for your soldering iron so that you are only heating that small area - especially . The “octapus” (or 4-armed helper) that you have with the magnifying glass will come in handy because you can keep things that you are trying to solder to an optimum viewing and soldering angle. Pre-tin or pre-solder everything (like wires) you can first. Also, solder separate items together before combining them into the “whole”. You can clip the leads on the resistors as short as you need to.
Randy is right. Use a smaller, pointed tip for your soldering iron so that you are only heating that small area you want to solder to. I’ve soldered Hall sensors before with 30 ga. wire and the small tip was essential!
The “octapus” (or 4-armed helper) that you have with the magnifying glass will come in handy because you can keep things that you are trying to solder to an optimum viewing and soldering angle.
Pre-solder your soldering tip everything time you are going to solder something, as well as pre-tinning any wire you plan to solder to. Pre-bending a wire 90 degrees at the tip sometimes makes soldering accessibility a bit easier.
Solder separate items together before combining them into the “whole”.
You can clip the leads on the resistors as short as you need to.
If you’re worried about re-attaching wires to the connector you can cut the wire leaving about an inch attached to the connector. then just solder the wires back together. Not always possible depending on what you are trying to do, but easier than dealing with some of the small (or really small) connectors.
That S1 was my first DCC install. I’ve done quite a few since then. Some were a lot harder, but now, they all see pretty straight forward.
You guys keep dragging up my old posts. That’s good, becasue the newbees can see just how lame my questions were and then they don’t feel bad about asking , too.