5 Top Soldering Mistakes

These 5 top mistakes beginners are easily make when soldering. EPCB here explains the reason why it is wrong in simple words. Hope it is useful to you.

1. Removing iron before applying solder: Some people are used to heating the pad and the pin, then removing the solder iron before trying to apply the solder. But this will unfortunately not work well. When you remove to iron, the pad and pin will cool down quickly, so the solder won’t melt.

2. Heating only the pad: This is another common mistake. You may heat the pad, then apply the solder. But since the pin is not heated, the solder will not connect properly to the pin.

3. Cutting pins too short: To make the board look nice and neat, some people often push the component all the way into the hole, then cut the pin so that it doesn’t stick out of the board at all. But this makes it hard to solder the pin, and ends up with some solder covering the hole, but not actually connecting the pin to it.

4. Using too little solder: Some people are afraid of using too much solder, so they apply only a little bit. Though the amount of solder isn’t the most important point, it’s better to apply enough solder to a solder joint so as to make sure it connects properly.

5. Afraid to heat the joint too much: You may worry about heating the board too much, so you try to solder the solder joint in less than a second to keep the circuit board from burning. However, you can damage some components by too much heat from the solder joint, but in the beginning it’s not something to worry about.