Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

[Agent24]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Make sure there is a 1Megohm resistor between the iron tip and earth, so you don't short anything to ground if you accidentally solder something live. Also this limits current of ESD events.

It could also be a fault in the tip/handle or bad design of the power supply making the tip live.

[Dannyx]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

The stray voltage will be enough to damage semiconductors!

Yeah, I may have killed some stuff too because of this without even realizing it So it's ground or bust from now on. Sadly there isn't anything metal around which I can use for grounding, so the long wire idea is probably the way to go.....unless it turns out the wire itself acts as an antenna and ends up picking up stray voltages

[stj]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

you may be able to find a grounded gas or water pipe if there are no plastic sections.
or even a lightning conductor outside a window going from the roof to the ground.

[redwire]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

The stray voltage will be enough to damage semiconductors! I killed a few IC's before realizing I had a bad ground on my workbench mat, so I added LED indicators:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=64639

I would go through the pain of finding a good ground in the building.

[Dannyx]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Pffff....I just noticed something: my KSGER T12 soldering thingy likes to zap me I was doing some minor soldering with it and I had one hand on the bloody solder spool and suddenly felt some tingles through my fingers when I touched it to the board at the same time as the iron. At first I thought it was just a random feeling, but then it happened again This led me to believe there's some discharge happening on the tip itself from the element, which travel through my body and into the floor, causing the zaps. Normally, the earth terminal on the station should take care of such discharges, trouble is most of the outlets in my apartment do not have the earth terminal or it's not connected (if it's a "Shucko"), so I don't know what to do about it. Makes me wonder why it's happening though, since the thing should be powered by a SMPS so it should be isolated. That's like getting shocked by the metal chassis of the computer or TV.....which actually did happen to me on some occasions as well. Is there a solution to this ?

The only quick and dirty idea I could come up with on the fly was to run a very long wire from the nearest outlet which actually has earth, tie the other end to the metal frame of my workbench and then add a banana plug on the back of the station connected to the "cold" GND which powers the element to act as a "sink".....sucky electrical installs over here, I know

[stj]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

most ali sellers offer shipping options.
avoid u.s. gangsters(couriors) like UPS or TNT or FEDEX like the plague.
those fucking gangsters hold your item till you pay them import tax and handling fee's!!

[Dannyx]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Sadly I couldn't find any microscopes for microsoldering on local auction sites and getting one imported via Ebay would probably get expensive in terms of shipping. Amazingly, someone sells an Amscope SM-4TP here for 550 EUR (612USD). The price is actually higher than on Ali, so it doesn't seem like a good deal at all, especially for an used item, but then I had another look and saw the shipping on Ali costs as much as the device itself, coming in at a whopping 400+ USD, so I would save that...still, quite a considerable amount of dough there ! !

[diif]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

I got a decent used item off ebay for a price that's not much more than some digital ones. £120
There is the saying "buy cheap, buy twice" sometimes its not worth buying the cheap.
Personally I prefer to wait and buy decent second user equipment. It's how I got a £3k spectrometer for £200.

[Dannyx]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

True, I'm aware it's not going to beat the stereo microscope, but neither does the price The idea most people embrace is that the little money they're able to make with their cheap tools allows them to evolve and buy better stuff...that's how I see it too TBH.

[diif]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Go and have a look through a stereo microscope at a motherboard.
Then you will see why they are rated. Depth perception being the main benefit.
A digital one is better than none but not even close to a proper stereo microscope.
It enabled me to fix things impossible without. One of the best bits of kit I own.

[Dannyx]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Still on the subject of soldering equipment, something I've always wanted ever since I started watching Louis is of course the good ol' microscope. We don't have one where I work sadly and for quite some time I was thinking of going for it and getting one for myself to use at home, since it would help me get into the finer stuff of board repair, but I always held back because it's a pretty expensive thing and would probably not pay for itself, at least not easily. This is why I considered taking a step back and starting off with one of those cheapo "digital" ones that hook up via USB or HDMI, or even have their own display on them if they're slightly more expensive, since any microscope would be better than no microscope at all for a beginner such as myself, especially since I've never worked under one before to know how good my hand-eye coordination is and it would allow me to get used to the feel of it, without putting a big dent in my budget which would take a couple of months to restore. Of course I saw some vids about them on YT, but it's not the same in person... Any thoughts on this ? Has anyone ever played with those, or did you go straight for the "real deal" ? Is it a suitable choice for a beginner after all ?

[Curious.George]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

you never know what some fucker may have already done.

I won't touch anything that someone has already "mucked with". Consider, he's either:

• competent and this proved to be too big a problem for him
• incompetent and who knows what the f*ck he's done to make things WORSE!

If I notice evidence of repairs while examining the board(s) itself, I immediately get tense: "Oh, crap. A 'pro' wouldn't have left this much 'evidence' of his work..." So, I'm considerably more willing to throw in the towel than I would be if I was just facing a "component failure".

A friend asked me to fix his (old) EM pinball machine many decades ago. Even without a drawing set, they are relatively easy to suss out as they all tend to be just collections of simple circuits that are very similar from game to game.

It wasn't long before I realized that "someone" had already been tinkering with it -- wires in places they shouldn't be (wires don't just desolder/resolder themselves!). When I confronted my friend, he sheepishly admitted that he'd tried to fix it (no idea how he thought that the "fault" was in the wiring!).

Some time, even later, I came across the backglass (the part where the score is displayed) -- which had been removed and hidden away lest it accidentally be damaged. Then, noticed that the game had been designed for three score reels ("moving digits") while it now had FOUR!

Suddenly, all the "moved wires" took on a new meaning... :<

[Dannyx]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Getting things "right" the first time is very important

Yes, yes and yes some more. I too would be a stickler if I were the owner of a company, more specifically one like ours which services stuff - I wouldn't know about other fields like economics or schools or supermarkets, but in my eyes a service center, big or small, popular or not, has to be ITSELF perfect and professional before it can claim it provides perfect and professional services to others. A workbench looking like the one I showed you would NOT last very long if I were in charge around here, to the point where people might call me a prick or flat out quit. I'd first present all the principles I stand by, for all to observe, then watch over their behavior and style and correct them where necessary, through a friendly reminder that I would like the screws to be kept separate from the nuts, all the caps sorted by value and the tickets typed in with no grammatical or spelling errors which is something that's getting out of hand lately, like they're headbutting the keyboards....I would not tolerate this lackluster excuse for tickets, that the client also gets to read and keep to share with others, mind you ! Embarrassing ! I'd follow up with more strict methods of coercion if need be...like taking a stick or some other long and flat piece and sweeping all that cr@p off the desk to at least give them a reason to pick it up and put it where it belongs....for others to see and serve as an example that this dude does not F around and likes people who use their brain

that part i agree with,
i NEVER plug mains powered stuff in without opening it.
you never know what some fucker may have already done.

Mmmyyyeeaaah....your point there is perfectly valid, not going to argue, though I must admit I've rarely done so. I take the gamble and plug it in, unless of course the client tells me upfront that they or someone else had been inside to the point where it's got stuff rattling inside. The only time I got bitten in the @ss, was when I plugged an LG TV in and the outlet+breaker went POOF ! - lights out, UPSs beeping everywhere What happened was, the earth terminal of the mains inlet had been jumped to one of the "hot" prongs of the inlet. I think I wrote a post about this because it was just so silly The chap said it worked for him at home, but it would trip the breaker whenever he took it to his parents' house. That's because his house had outlets with unconnected earth prongs, whereas his folks' house actually used earth and since a C type plug can go in either way, you had a 50% chance of directly shorting live to earth Removed that jumper wire the super skilled engineer added and made some easy money, but I must admit your principle would've saved me a jumpscare there

[stj]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

before even plugging the thing in to know what it does, he start tearing it apart

that part i agree with,
i NEVER plug mains powered stuff in without opening it.
you never know what some fucker may have already done.

i was with a friend once, going through some stuff from an electronics auction.
before i could stop him he plugged a monitor in and filled the room with smoke.
when i opened it there was a ziplock bag inside with a power transistor in it - someone had started to diagnose a fault and then stopped - presumably because the company/customer wouldnt pay for replacement parts.
so he had bagged the bad bits and thrown it back together.

SO NEVER POWER UP UNKOWN SHIT!!!

[Curious.George]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

You must be a tough boss to please which is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on how big your company is.

Getting things "right" the first time is very important -- when you are making products that others rely upon (and, when the cost of "fixing" the mistakes you've baked into the product far exceed the profits derived from them!)

[Dannyx]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

You must be a tough boss to please which is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on how big your company is.

[Curious.George]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Very interesting concept

Could you please give me an example of a question that you would ask

I ask (relatively) "simple" questions -- the applicant doesn't have a lot of time to invest in the actual "design". I'm trying to get an idea as to how he approaches the problem.

E.g., if he doesn't ask any/many questions to QUALIFY exactly what I'm after (or, if those questions just appear to be "stalling tactics") and jumps right into the design, then he's "lost points" in my book -- if you don't know where you're "going", how can you even start out??

For a "hardware designer", I'd ask to design a little amplifier or a sequential logic circuit. After the initial questions are out of the way, will he just start willy-nilly HOPING it all comes together? Or, will he have an idea of the basic structure that he should put in place and flesh it out?

For a "programmer", will he design a solution that is specific (e.g., "sort this list of 37 items") or one that can be applied to a whole class of problems (e.g., sort A list of items). Will he include invariants to document the solution? Will he even consider the potential problems that might arise in the "input"?

Again, the goal is to discover if he THINKS or just ACTS. How much of his effort will later be spent fixing things he forgot to consider ahead of time?

Here, for instance, is a nominal bit of code to copy a section of memory from a "source" to a "destination" location:

copy(
   char *to,
   char *from,
   int length
) {
  do {
    *to++ = *from++;
  } while (--length);
}

It has numerous "problems". Will the applicant make these mistakes? Will he even understand the issues that are involved?

And, when shown those problems, will he just think they are "nits" being picked? Or, will he realize he's failed??

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

When I interview job applicants for engineering positions, I inevitably give them a "clean sheet" problem to "solve". Force them to start with a blank sheet of paper so you can see their thought processes.

It's amazing how many candidates this weeds out!

Very interesting concept

Could you please give me an example of a question that you would ask

If you do not want to post on the forum could you PM it to me I am very interested how you word the question

[Curious.George]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

I like sharing my findings so that I may help others, though I always include some sort of disclaimer, even if it's sort-of tongue-in-cheek, that it may not work for everyone and they should still use their brain, as Louis would say

But you may not REALLY be helping them -- other than saving them the cost of a replacement product, etc. They are likely to then assume ALL problems are simply other instances of the original problem (e.g., "replace all the elytics").

I tailor my solutions to my assessment of the "audience"/querant. And, will often express it in a way that relies on that assessment.

For example, as a guideline, it is considered bad practice to allow TELNET into most hosts (favoring SSH, instead). And, doubly so to allow "root" ("Administrator") logins "over the wire".

So, this question often comes up in forums/mailing lists devoted to those systems.

The Pedants will rant and rave about how you shouldn't do this and will use that as a rationale for NOT answering the question. (Gotta wonder if they've EVER "run with scissors" or "walked under a ladder"!)

They show their bias and ignorance by not understanding that there may be a genuine NEED to do these things (e.g., to connect from an appliance that doesn't support newer/safer protocols; or, to form connections in an air-gapped/safe environment!).

If I believe the querant to understand these issues (based on my knowledge of their question/answer HISTORY), I'll provide an answer that points them to the remedy -- without expressly indicating the changes that need to be made to their system(s). If they can't get to the solution from this information, then they're likely not knowledgeable enough of the issues and would be better served "living without".

[Curious.George]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

I have some people at work that are very mechaniclay incline but they have no troubleshooting skills at all but if I explain why it is done a certain way then they understand it for the most part but they do not understand how to do troubleshooting skills and where to being

When I interview job applicants for engineering positions, I inevitably give them a "clean sheet" problem to "solve". Force them to start with a blank sheet of paper so you can see their thought processes.

It's amazing how many candidates this weeds out! They might be good at tweaking some EXISTING design but don't have the skills to start a new one "from scratch". So, they obviously don't understand the structure of those solutions and can only "hit-or-miss" existing designs for incremental improvements (undoubtedly missing the BIGGER structural improvements that might be possible)