What is the Right Soldering Temperature?

The right soldering temperature is something that always ignored. But, have you ever confused what is the right soldering temperature in various situations? Our suggestion is that you have to get the solder joint hot enough to melt the solder. Most solder melts around 180 to 190 degrees Celsius equals to 360 to 370 degrees Fahrenheit. So we have to get the solder joint hotter than this.

There are few things that will impact the soldering temperature that you need on your soldering iron. If you have a high effect soldering iron with a large soldering tip, you don’t need that high temperature, maybe 250 degrees Celsius is enough. But if you are using a low effect iron with a small, tiny soldering tip which transfers heat badly, you need a higher temperature like 400 degrees Celsius. If you have a huge solder joint, you will need a higher temperature than if you have tiny, small solder joint.

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Why Do You Need to Tin?

To be honest, you don’t really need to tin. But it can help. For example, you can tin the tip of your soldering iron by first cleaning it with a sponge, then apply a bit of solder to the tip. Or you can tin the pin of a component by heating it with your soldering iron, then melt a bit of solder onto it. The advantage is that it will transfer heat better. So when you tin the tip of your soldering iron, it should make the soldering process a bit simpler. Do it every time your tip needs to be cleaned. Tinning the tip of your soldering iron before you put it down for the day is said to help your tip last longer.

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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.

Why and When to Use Reflow Soldering?

As a beginner, you may confuse why you would use reflow soldering, what are the pros and cons of this technique, and when would you favor it over other techniques? This article will explain them one by one in easy words. 

Reflow soldering techniques are often a very good choice for surface mount components. While most surface-mount boards can be assembled manually using a soldering iron and solder wire, the process is slow and the resultant boards can be unreliable. Modern PCB assembly facilities use reflow soldering exclusively for large-scale production, with pick and place machines putting the components onto the boards, which have had solder paste applied to the pads, and the whole process is automated.
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Common Soldering Mistakes

One common soldering job might be to put a connector on something like this. The copper that has been exposed to air for a long time forms an oxide layer on its surface and that oxide layer tends to disrupt the alloying process of soldering. So it’s important to be able to get rid of that oxide layer before you begin soldering.

There are two ways to do that. The first is to mechanically remove it. You can do that by using sand paper to abrade away the oxide, and the other way is to chemically remove it and for that. Begin by adding some rosin, placing it in your vice, and heating it with your iron. You will have a nicely tinned piece of copper when a smoke forms as the flux burns off. 

Now, if you try to do the same process with the oxidized copper, you’re going to run into trouble. As you heat the joint after adding the flux, your solder is still tries to find its way. That copper hasn’t been properly soldered and the reason for that is the oxides that have formed on its surface tend to disrupt that alloying process. So in order to make a better solder joint, what you need to do is to remove an oxide layer.

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Soldering Irons

Soldering irons, a simple iron and a temperature-controlled one, need different wattages while working.

A 30-watt simple soldering iron is okay for modest electronics. Soldering ordinary through hole electronic components and thin wire, even the thin metal legs on direct current power plugs and sockets, should be fine.

While a temperature-controlled soldering iron needs much higher power than a simple iron, for example 80W or more. This allows it to maintain a relatively constant soldering temperature even it is being used at the same time, and heat parts with larger thermal conduction or capacity. It won't slow down an operator, and is a bit more flexible on what it can be used for than a simple iron. That is very important on a production line, or where a lot of soldering joints need to be made relatively rapidly. However, a simple iron is likely to drop too far below adequate soldering temperature, and slow the operator down which will cause boss much loss.

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3 Need-To-Know Soldering Techniques

3 need-to-know soldering techniques when soldering on printed circuit boards are descibed as follows by EPCB: 

Soldering iron: This is the most basic of the soldering techniques. You use a soldering iron to heat the component leg and the pad, then apply solder.

Using an oven: It is also called reflow soldering. Basically, just like baking bread, you bake your board the same way in an oven. It’s a very common technique for soldering surface mount components quickly. The cool thing about using the reflow soldering technique is that the components have a tendency to place themselves correctly. This is really useful for soldering integrated circuits with very little space between the legs. For example if you place an integrated circuit a bit off its pads, when the solder melts it will often slide into the right place.

Hot-air soldering: Hot-air soldering is a way to melt the solder by blowing really hot air at an area of your circuit board. It looks a bit like a soldering iron. But instead of a hot iron, it blows hot air. This is really useful for doing circuit board rework, especially fixing soldering errors on a board. For example if you soldered the chip the wrong way. It’s a hassle to desolder a chip pin-by-pin. But by heating it with hot air, the solder on all the pins melt at the same time and you can move it into the correct position.

Soldering Components on a Stripboard

A stripboard is a circuit board with holes and printed strips of metal. These boards are a good way of connecting simple to medium complicated circuits. Beginners are highly recommended to use stripboards in the beginning because you can control your connections and relatively easy to fix errors.

Soldering components on a stripboard: On the back side of the stripboard you can see several strips of metal which connect the holes either vertically or horizontally. Firstly, place all the components on the stripboard according to the schematic. Try to use the connections already on the stripboard as much as possible. Always think through where you want to place the components before you start soldering. After placing a component, bend its leads to make it stay in place when you turn the stripboard around to solder. Solder all the components to the stripboard and make sure you have good solder joints all over.

You can build all kinds of circuits! But a circuit with many connections can become a real hassle when you are trying to figure out which wire goes to where. You can first make sure all the connections are correct on your computer, then do it as per your schematic.

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Soldering Tools That Make Your Life Easier

The soldering tools you need to get started with soldering are a soldering iron and some solder wire. But there are some other tools that will make your soldering much easier. Aside from the soldering iron and the solder wire, here are a few other useful tools that EPCB would recommend to have when soldering electronics.

Wet Sponge: A wet sponge is very useful for cleaning the tip of the soldering iron. The tip is hot so that it will oxidize very fast and get dirty. A clean tip transfers heat faster and makes your soldering easier. A sponge is so cheap, so you should always keep one together with your other soldering tools.

Tweezers: Tweezers are some very handy soldering tools. You use them to keep components in their place and to avoid burning your fingers when soldering. You can also use them for placing small surface mount components.

Solder sucker: The solder sucker is a mechanical vacuum pump that sucks the solder away from the solder joint when it is melted.

Solder wick: The solder wick is a tool you use for de-soldering. It is made up of copper threads that will “suck” the solder from the solder joint. The solder wick is used for removing small amounts of solder. 

Wave Soldering

Wave soldering is a bulk soldering process used in the manufacture of printed circuit boards. It is used for both through-hole printed circuit assemblies, and surface mount. However, wave soldering problems is common during a PCB fabrication process. 

This can be caused by a variety of reasons and the primary one which comes to our mind in the first time is bad plated through-hole barrels. So check the plating in the barrels to make sure there are no voids is very crucial in a wave soldering process. Voids will have a tendency to create outgassing and this creates voids in the solder joints.

The other issue is to bake the boards to expel moisture trapped in a PCB. Great experience in successfully eliminating voids by pre-baking boards and storing them in vacuum sealed bags is really useful. You should know that once a board is baked, if left out in the open air, it will reabsorb 75% of the moisture you just baked out of it within 48 hours. So before wave soldering, make sure the moisture of your board could be as lowest as possible, or you can find voids appeared.
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Solder Bridge

A bridged solder joint is formed by melting two solder joints together, forming an unintended connection between the two. The spacing between connections is quite tight, so you can easily bridge across two terminal connections. You can check by testing for shorts between each connection or use a magnifying glass to visually examine the connections.

You can avoid this only by using enough solder to make a good joint, because solder bridges often happen between joints with too much solder to begin with. If you have to tackle the solder bridge, it is not difficult. Sometimes the excess solder can be drawn off by dragging the tip of a hot iron between the two solder joints. If there is too much solder, a solder sucker or solder wick can help get rid of the excess.

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A Broken Solder Pad

This is a common problem, especially when re-doing wiring. A combination of heat and the physical stress of removing a wire can cause the copper pad to break away from the copper trace leaving a fine gap between the two. The best way to check this is to use a multimeter to check a gap between the pad and the destination of the connection. Follow the trace from where the pad connects to another visible connection point. These can usually be repaired by taking an ink eraser and rubbing down the trace right by the pad to expose base copper and then heating the existed solder and use the iron's tip to drag the molten solder out over the exposed copper of the trace to make the connection. Recheck with the multimeter to validate that you not have a connection from pad to destination of trace. If the gap is significant, use a piece of fine bared wire to bridge the gap and then solder a trace and a joint is a good choice.

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Soldering a Surface Mount Resistor

There are several ways to successfully solder SMD components on a circuit board. Some are easier to learn, and some require using special materials (like solder paste, which is a mixture of powdered solder and flux) or special equipment (like SMD solder stations). Actually, you don’t need fancy equipment to do SMD soldering at home. You can easily do it with a soldering iron.

Soldering a resistor is the simplest way for freshmen. At the beginning, you should apply flux to one pad on the circuit board in order to clean the pad and make it easier for the solder to fasten properly. And then touch the circuit board pad with the tip which covers some solder to let them pass on to the pad. Next, place the resistor on its ideal location, and fix it by soldering. The resistor should now be fastened on one side. Apply solder to the soldering tip again and touch the iron tip on the other side. Finally, you’d better to use a loupe to check the solder joints to make sure the connection is good. 

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Soldering Surface Mount Chips

There are several ways to successfully solder SMD components on a circuit board. Some are easier to learn, and some require using special materials (like solder paste, which is a mixture of powdered solder and flux) or special equipment (like SMD solder stations). Actually, you don’t need fancy equipment to do SMD soldering at home. You can easily do it with a soldering iron. 

If you are able to solder a resistor, it won’t be difficult for you to solder a surface mount chip as the method is similar. Start by applying some solder to one of the chip’s corner pads. Secondly, hold the chip in place while touching the corner pad with the tip of the soldering iron so that the heated solder can combine the pin with the pad. Next, check the alignment of the chip. If it is not in its place, then relocate it. Only you’re sure the chip place is perfect, can you move to the next step. Then you can solder on the opposite corner just like the one you have fixed. Finally, after all the pins have been soldered, you should inspect all the solder joints carefully with a loupe to check if there exist any bad joints or solder bridges. 

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