Five steps for correct soldering with an electric soldering iron
1. Preparing for welding
Get soldering wire and soldering iron ready. At this time, it is particularly emphasized that the head of the soldering iron must be kept clean, that is, it can be stained with solder (commonly known as eating tin).
2. Heating weldments
Touch the soldering iron to the soldering point. First, keep the soldering iron heating all parts of the soldering piece, such as the leads and pads on the printed circuit board. Secondly, pay attention to letting the flat part (larger part) of the soldering iron tip contact the parts with larger heat capacity. The side or edge part of the soldering iron tip contacts the weldment with smaller heat capacity to keep the weldment evenly heated.
3. Melted solder
When the weldment is heated to a temperature that can melt the solder, the soldering wire is placed on the solder joint, and the solder begins to melt and wet the solder joint.
4. Remove the solder
When a certain amount of solder has melted, remove the solder wire.
5. Remove the soldering iron
When the solder completely wets the solder joint, remove the soldering iron. Note that the direction of removing the soldering iron should be approximately 45°.
The above process takes about two or three seconds for a general solder joint. For solder joints with small heat capacity, such as small pads on printed circuit boards, sometimes a three-step method is used to summarize the operation method, that is, the above steps 2 and 3 are combined into one step, and steps 4 and 5 are combined into one step. In fact, the subtle distinction is still five steps, so the five-step method is universal and is the basic method for mastering manual soldering iron soldering. In particular, the time spent between each step is crucial to ensuring welding quality, and can only be mastered gradually through practice.
