Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

[diif]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

With a stereo microscope and decent tweezers it's possible to do crazy routing with non insulating.
I have some of that chineae wire and my issue has not been the wire melts but I seem to have an issue getting the coating off.

[stj]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

i'v done that, but insulated wire has more possilbilty's for routing - if it's not going to disolve on the soldering tip!!

[diif]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

I use strand out of some twisted pair cat5 with some conformal coating to insulate it after I'm done.

[stj]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

so how easy is it to melt/burn the insulation off that wire without the actual copper disolving into the solder??

[Dannyx]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Sure wish our shop were pro enough to get a microscope. My older coworker, G., actually has what he calls a "microscope camera", which is a CCD camera with a large barrel lens which supposedly magnifies a lot. He never uses it though, which makes me think that it's either not great or he's just dumb and likes to struggle. I'll ask him to let me have a look through it and if I'm pleased with the results, I'll probably use it, even though a screen is probably not as great to look at as true microscope ports, but hey....beggars can't be choosers...

[diif]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

You nailed it, if you're able to see as well as Louis (microscope), it really is as easy as he makes it look. Once I got mine, I was able to tackle any job.

[Dannyx]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Hey guys, me again

Still on the topic of soldering cr@p, today I tried doing some repair work on my own laptop - yes that's right: I donated my own laptop to the cause by trying to fix something which I screwed up myself a while ago. I was treating my laptop to a dusting and thermal compound replacement once and I pried the heatsink off the GPU using a flathead screwdriver by jamming it between the board and one of the metal wings which actually secures the heatsink onto the screw pegs....HUGE mistake: I didn't realise it at the time, but the screwdriver broke several traces on the board.

It works just fine to this day, but apparently those traces are related to the on-board NIC, since it no longer works (it sends packets but receives absolutely nothing). It actually took me a very long time to correlate the issue with those broken traces, so today I tried fixing them but didn't get the results I was expecting.

I don't have a picture of the area in question (I was too disappointed to think of pictures at that time ), but basically there's a round scratch in the very top layer of the board where the traces used to be. It's right next to the GPU, making the job pretty hard, if not impossible, with my modest tools and skills ! The GPU is an Nvidia and also serves the chipset, the NIC itself also being an Nvidia Nforce, also confirmed by the boardview which shows the LAN jack connected directly to some of the balls under that chip.

Long story short, the idea was to try and bridge over that hole with jumper wires. Unfortunately this was easier said than done and not as easy as Louis makes it look. The lack of good magnification was the first hurdle. I managed to get around it in a kinda-sorta-way with a magnifying visor and a handheld magnifier to the point where I managed to see what I was supposed to achieve, but soldering was a different matter entirely. I started by scraping some of the coating off the remaining traces to allow solder to stick, then dabbed some flux on there, grabbed the finest tip I have, the JL02 and after a bit of struggling I managed to get some solder on there.

The next issue was the jumpers: the traces being extremely small and extremely close, I tried finding some wire small enough to fit there without touching, but couldn't find any. I tried pulling some strands out of some copper cable, but even those were too thick, so this is where I gave up. The lack of a stable magnifier also meant it was impossible for me to solder and hold the tweezers AND the magnifier at the same time, since that would require 3 hands which I currently don't have

Even so, I feel like I almost got it, had I had thin enough wire, so I am willing to persevere with this though and so I got myself THESE to try out. A microscope would sure be a treat to have

Any ideas and tips on running jumper wires like these ?

[vinceroger69]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

At £8.99 its worth a risk lol either way i will get the cash back i will update if i get a package or a refund.

A update well the item didnt arrive as we all knew it wouldnt, so i have requested a refund ebay say the seller is no longer a member but as ebay/paypal say i will have no problem getting in my cash back.

[captainKKK]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Ok, so the guy is overwhelmed with orders, but at least he sent me mine . It works well, just as good as my friend that paid $82 on Amazon for the identical item. Many of his customers are mad and impatient, so they cancel and then flame him, possibly driving him out of eBay..... Could you supply products from the other side of the plant, that weigh more than 10 pounds, for $10(with help from your government) ? Maybe the guy is just trying to make a business.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Professiona...72.m2749.l2648

PLEASE NOTE: I am NOT endorsing this product and still believe you are unlikely to get your order, because of the price and number of units sold.....this is way past a promo sale to generate interest. I bought this very early when it appeared on eBay. Buy at your own risk and don't blame me if not received.

[captainKKK]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Ok, so the guy is overwhelmed with orders, but at least he sent me mine . It works well, just as good as my friend that paid $82 on Amazon for the identical item. Many of his customers are mad and impatient, so they cancel and then flame him, possibly driving him out of eBay..... Could you supply products from the other side of the plant, that weigh more than 10 pounds, for $10(with help from your government) ? Maybe the guy is just trying to make a business.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Professiona...72.m2749.l2648

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

I agree with you but sometimes it hard to tell if a seller is some one you can trust or not there are times that when looking at Seller feedback I seeing a trend that does not quite look right and if I can find another seller with same item I will buy from them instead

[momaka]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Yes, I know it's a scammer but I cannot get hurt, so what the hey?

Sorry, but that is just TERRIBLE reasoning/logic there!

DO NOT FEED THE SCAMMERS / EBAY TROLLS!!!

Yes, you may not get hurt. But someone has to, if those scammers run away with the money and eBay can't recover it back. In this particular case, it would be eBay/Paypal that pays for this... but not really, because it's not like eBay/Paypal will willfully agree to be taken advantage of like that. If anything, those lost funds due to scammers will likely be anticipated for and accounted for through the eBay listing fees. And where do the listing fees come from??? - The sellers.

Although I am not a seller myself, I don't want to screw anyone else that is trying to sell on eBay. I buy things on there once in a while, and I would hate to see more and more sellers leaving eBay due to raising fees. So in the end, everyone gets affected by these scammers, one way or another, even if it seems like that's not the case.

For this reason, I will repeat this one more time:
DO NOT FEED THE SCAMMERS / EBAY TROLLS!!!

[stj]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

there are JBC clones now.

[Dannyx]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Some other soldering stations I came across while browsing the site from where our shop orders stuff are Thermaltronics and SolderPeak, but other than the obvious difference in the outer appearance and how they try to top each other with buttons and flashy displays, they all use the same Hakko-style sleeve tips and they're even the same power (70-80w), so it's really the same as my Gordak in the long run. Wouldn't come down to the tool itself as much as the tips on it. I'm looking to graduate from my little Gordak here at the shop and I'm afraid it wouldn't actually be an upgrade outisde the more professional appearance. A true upgrade would be something like a JBC or Quick (the iron, not the 861DW), but that would probably be pushing the budget this joint is willing to invest in me. I've already spent some of it on an Uni-T meter, so I think requesting it a new iron as well might take the biscuit and I'd get flipped off

Have a look through here. Some of you closer to my region probably know TME, though you may need to go to the upper-right to change the language since I was too lazy to do it myself I tend not to use my native language whenever possible, so the only reason I had to do it here was so the prices would show up in my local currency so it would be easier to give the guys over in the supplies department a figure should I decide I want something.

[megaraider]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Knowing cats as i do, the cat will be faraway well before he even hears the explosion...!
miauing to him: 'dam owner... one can't even sleep quietly'

[stj]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

and has a "fire extinguisher" nearby.

[megaraider]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Only now did I decide to check that guy out, as he's apparently pretty popular and does very interesting stuff, right up there with ElectroBoom and BigCliveDotCom and I don't think he's from the same country as me TBH, so I remembered this post of yours and decided to reply after all this time

Like is (DiodeGoneWild) good taste - always under the beautiful cat supervision

[raider988]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Yes, it's about 150$ the station alone, plus a decent transformer, a case and the iron.
It would about 250$, but are they worth?

[stj]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

i started gathering parts, but stopped - it's very expensive compared to other controllers.

[raider988]

Re: Soldering station thoughts and guidelines

Looks like I'm a year late for the party... but anyway, has anyone tried to buil the Unisolder from Sparkybg?