Soldering isn’t as easy as I thought
At first, I thought soldering was easy since we only needed to melt the solder with a soldering iron into pins, wires, etc. But after trying it and seeing the result myself, it was not as easy as I thought. With whatever items or tools are available to me, I try to solder my RFID RC-522 with my new arrival soldering iron. The result can be seen in the image below.
I solder it without using flux and this is the result. You can say it is ‘messy’ and not good-looking at all. Next, I want to solder a mini speaker so I can use it for fun project.
That’s what I planned, though, in the middle of soldering, I canceled it because of a ‘lack of knowledge’ with this component. I asked about ‘how to use it’ but no answers came. I searched throughout the internet, yet, no results — or maybe, since I’m new to electrical, I just don’t know where to ask. Because of that, I desolder this component using solder suck after installing jumper wire on it.
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Moving on, I tried various of soldering iron headers to see its difference in melting solder. At least, I’ve tried 3 out of 6 of my soldering iron headers. You can see it in the image below.
I tried bevel, conical, and chisel header types — as shown in the image above. You can see that there is residual solder on the tip’s end. I didn’t know that cleaning the header’s tip was important to maintain its longevity. I have noted that after searching and reading articles about soldering. I have a sponge as the soldering iron header’s tip cleaner, but, I didn’t use it properly with water — correct me if I’m wrong — instead, I used the sponge in dry condition so it didn’t help me clean my header’s tip so much.
I realized it — watering the sponge — after reading articles while I was done soldering my components. And I was late to put water on the sponge. Therefore, the result is shown in the image above. I can say this was messy for the first time. Yet, I need to start soldering since I wanted to learn more about electronics. Next time, I’ll buy more proper tools to solder my electronic components and get better results.
For the soldering process, I use the Taffware Solder Iron Adjustable Temperature 60W — CS31, which includes five interchangeable tips (I, B, K, 3C, and 2.4D) and a sponge for cleaning the tips.
And that concludes the story of my first attempt at soldering electronic components. I hope you enjoyed reading it! Feel free to leave a comment or ask any questions you might have — I’d be happy to help.
