Thanks, yeah i one day shipped some flux from amazon but didn’t really need it. I used it if I wanted to redo some solder, but is that the correct way to use? Ordered it though for the codec chip with 28 pins, figured that’d be hell without.
Problem is some of the joints or solder looks sandy like it lost its properties, and won’t reheat/allow resistor to attach. How do i remove solder if i dont have that braid remover thing?
Best wait for the braid, and flux too. I say that to sound responsible so you don’t cook the components. SMC’s are a pain at any skill level. Those “sandy” solders aren’t ideal but not a critical failure either, so leave them till all the work is done and get back to them if there’s any issues traceable to them.
Ahhh gotcha, yeah i have the flux already so using it more.
Have a feeling i cooked something that first round, held soldering iron on for too long trying to reheat solder.
Good part is the pcb and these resistors are cheap. Parts I don’t want to ruin are the cirrus logic chip and raspberry pi 3b+, which are impossible to find.
Lesson learned on cheaping out on a soldering iron though. 
You can always practice on old stuff around the house. Pull apart an old clock radio and de-solder/re-solder randomly. See how far you can heat shit till it explodes (avoid those alkali caps though).
Flux is essentially a cleaning agent that helps solder bond to metal. If you find that your solder isn’t flowing but the joint is hot, try adding a small dab of flux.
When desoldering, if your braid doesn’t suck up the solder on it’s own, add some flux.
Flux is near magical stuff, you should see obvious results when you do and don’t use it.
Also get some > 99% pure isopropyl alcohol to clean the flux residue off your PCB when you are done, unless you love sticky PCBs.
Watch out for old thermostats and old fire alarms. Old thermostats often contain glass mercury switches. Perfectly safe unless you break the glass. Old fire alarms had minuscule radioactive samples inside. Also not terribly dangerous unless you fold it into your breakfast omelet, or fashion a codpiece out of hundreds of them.
Haha! Now I feel like I need to make one. Not wear it, just ensure that one exists.
Nice! I ordered the kit. Should be a good educational piece.
So I’ve had some ups and downs soldering my sparkfun simon says game where I’m learning to solder components.
One specific question I’d like feedback on… I put this atmega chip through the board and soldered the back and formed nice little volcanos, they all look good. But when I flipped it over, I noticed that the solder flowed through the hole differently on a number of the legs.
What I’m wondering is what people consider the right way? I.e., if you were doing it perfectly do you want solder to make it all the way through the hole and up the leg or do you just want the solder sitting shallow in the hole.
Notice the pins far to the right have no solder up the leg but the ones in the middle have varying amounts of solder up the leg. Which is best?
Thanks
I think people usually err n side of a more solid connection with a greater area covered in solder.
You don’t want there to be so much that it becomes conjoined with a joint next to it.
You can reflow a joint sometimes by adding a tiny amount of solder or flux and then reheating it for a moment to allow it to flow to the other side.
If that doesn’t work you can attempt the same thing on the other side of the circuit board (that you have pictured above).
After all that tiny smd soldering I’m blown away my Norns booted up.
I think I just ran some MIDI machines bc no audio.
Would it boot up but no audio bc of codec chip issue? I couldn’t tell if all the pins on that cirrus logic chip were good.
111/111 post
These are very interesting
I had success soldering male/female headers on a Teensy 4.1 and connecting it to its audio shield. I had ordered some pots and knobs from Tayda Electronics and I was able to get pretty far along in this guide. I’m able to twist knobs and get sound out controlling pitch, amplitude, etc:
http://thewessens.net/synthbook/#audio-and-the-teensy
The next project in front of me is one of the DIY midi breakout kits but it is intimidating me. It is just so many tiny pieces and they are very close together on the PCB.
I ordered some Kester solder because people seem to think it’s quality stuff. Maybe I will wait until it gets here until I try this.
i think this might be a good fit for my needs.
any reason i shouldn’t get this?
im hoping to hear from people who have more experience with oscilloscopes.
i already have a multimeter but it seems nice to have them in the same package
Interesting thread. Can anyone recommend soldering kits to look into and what to avoid?
Been watching a few vids and initially just want to attempt a screen & battery replacement.
Any experiences on the Edu Kits?
I find a lot of the new Erica drum Edu Kits really exciting.
My Main question: do you really use those modules in your daily Modular work?
Or is it more the fun of soldering🤔
Cheers
flo
I thought ablut Erica synths full DYI kit. But i didn’t want to blow all my funds this year by January…
nice! where have you get the forestcaver panels + pcb’s? i’m searching them for nearly a year now. the github is down, so no possibility to order them by myself.
As a proud owner of Ksoloti Gills, i will add it here. Unfortunately, i didnt build it myself. But, my friend told me it was “fun” and took a few hours.9
Thinking about the Elmyra 2 DIY kit. Any experiences/pointers here? Looks to be pretty straightforward
