I've used this method before. I used it on my Big 10" build GPS wiring. Works awesome.

Deal

(02-Jan-2020, 02:11 AM)iFly4rotors Wrote: My iron is a 110 volt (AC) 60 watt $15 unit that I keep between 425 and 450 degrees Celsius.

I'm mystified why so many people have their irons so hot. I saw Bardwell recently soldering at 470°C which is just insane! At such a high temperature, the flux in the solder will vanish in a puff of smoke as soon as you touch the solder to the joint and there will be very little left to dissolve oxides from the parts and help wetting. Such a high temperature will also wear out the tip of your iron much faster

I use a Xytronic LF3200 150W iron with swappable tips. If I'm soldering a power lead or motor leads to an ESC, my iron will have a large 45° bevelled tip fitted and be at 290°C maybe 300°C at an absolute maximum. For fine work on the flight controller with 30 AWG wires, I'll swap to a fine chisel shaped tip and set the iron to 280°C or even lower. I use eutectic solder with 62% tin, 36% lead and 2% silver. This particular alloy melts at just 179°C which really helps with keeping soldering temperatures down and the PCB's tracks still glued to the PCB. I won't entertain the lead free stuff with its high melting point, particularly if I'm repairing older electronics which still used tin/lead solder. It's just too easy to lift pads with the high temperature lead free stuff.

If you have to turn your iron's temperature up to over 425°C it is telling you that either the iron does not have enough power for the task at hand or that you are trying to use a tip which is far too small to supply heat to the joint faster than the joint can soak the heat away.

(19-Aug-2020, 10:17 PM)unseen Wrote: I'm mystified why so many people have their irons so hot. I saw Bardwell recently soldering at 470°C which is just insane! At such a high temperature, the flux in the solder will vanish in a puff of smoke as soon as you touch the solder to the joint and there will be very little left to dissolve oxides from the parts and help wetting. Such a high temperature will also wear out the tip of your iron much faster

I use a Xytronic LF3200 150W iron with swappable tips. If I'm soldering a power lead or motor leads to an ESC, my iron will have a large 45° bevelled tip fitted and be at 290°C maybe 300°C at an absolute maximum. For fine work on the flight controller with 30 AWG wires, I'll swap to a fine chisel shaped tip and set the iron to 280°C or even lower. I use eutectic solder with 62% tin, 36% lead and 2% silver. This particular alloy melts at just 179°C which really helps with keeping soldering temperatures down and the PCB's tracks still glued to the PCB. I won't entertain the lead free stuff with its high melting point, particularly if I'm repairing older electronics which still used tin/lead solder. It's just too easy to lift pads with the high temperature lead free stuff.

If you have to turn your iron's temperature up to over 425°C it is telling you that either the iron does not have enough power for the task at hand or that you are trying to use a tip which is far too small to supply heat to the joint faster than the joint can soak the heat away.

I normally run my TS100 at 360C for big wires and 340C for smaller stuff. With a 150W iron I can see you probably don't have the issues everyone else has with smaller irons. 

With a 60W iron you can expect it to lose 50-100C in tip temperature as soon as you touch the board, do that at 300C and you're down to 200C and the solder doesn't melt like it should.

I find keeping the temperature up helps me keep heat away from the rest of the board because I can be in and out with the heat in less than a second, so instead of heating the pad and whole board to 280C, the pad might see 350 for an instant but the rest of the board stays much cooler. But yeah most likely because you have such a big iron you can run cooler as it would hold heat better.

(19-Aug-2020, 10:32 PM)bffigjam Wrote: I normally run my TS100 at 360C for big wires and 340C for smaller stuff. With a 150W iron I can see you probably don't have the issues everyone else has with smaller irons.

With a 60W iron you can expect it to lose 50-100C in tip temperature as soon as you touch the board, do that at 300C and you're down to 200C and the solder doesn't melt like it should.

You're correct. The wattage of the iron makes all the difference. My bench iron is only 60W and for that reason I generally need to use a temperature of ~320°C for normal soldering and for the really large ground plane pads I sometimes need to go as high as ~450°C. I use a decent brand of proper leaded solder and plenty of flux with the correct tip for the job (small chisel tip for general stuff and a large bevel tip for the stubborn LiPo pigtail pads). That combination of temperatures and tips works for me just fine.

Even the legitimate Hakko FX-888D irons that a lot of people are using are only rated at 70W.

Do what you will, the higher temp does not transfer to the material unless you leave it there a long time. The higher temp just heats up the material faster.  I have used this temp for decades with no issues. While it sounds logical to use lower temps, the  reality is that hotter temps DO work well and heat the material to temp faster. Actually, the material normally does not actually reach the temp of the iron, it just heats faster. You use the temp you like, I will use the higher temp. It has worked for me for decades and still works.

Some really good tips in this post. There are so many variables to soldering correctly. I love the video above at around the 9:20 minute mark. It was hard to watch as the dude was seriously saying this is the correct way to solder. Technique wise he was great at tinning wires but when it came to the PCB omg. If you apply that amount of heat for such a long time soldering that wire to a pad there is a good chance you will damage the pad and also damage components.

That is a perfect example of using a too small tip, not enough heat with a soldering iron that does not have enough power.

There are simple rules in addition to the not using a low powered, not adjustable temp, single sized tip soldering iron part.

• If you are using needle tips throw them out or at least get a file and flatten the edge to a chisel. A bevel or chisel tip is what you need 100% of the time unless you are soldering hairs.
  
• The tip should be the same size or slightly bigger than the pad you are soldering the wire too
  
• A soldered joint should take seconds. 2 seconds absolute max or the risk of that heat travelling along the track and heating up the components increases rapidly. 1 second is the correct time for a soldered joint where components are.
  
• Use the mechanical ability of the wire to help. Think of it like a spring. You want to set up the wire so when the solder is melting it actually pushes itself through the solder towards the pad.
  
• Less is best. Don't bury the wire in solder.
  
• The solder you use should have enough flux in it for most jobs. But when doing big stuff like the power to ESC wire use a "tiny" bit of extra flux on the wire to help flow. Just dip the very tip in not the whole wire. A small amount of flux goes a long way.
  

Now all of the above are really easy to say but in practice can sometimes be difficult but you can cheat especially on big stuff like soldering the power leads to the ESC. Small stuff like soldering wires onto the FC you are pretty much stuck with having the right tip and correct heat setting or you will do a crap joint. No questions about it.

My setup whilst good does not have a near big enough tip to solder power leads to the ESC. To get around this I use my biggest tip, crank up the power to max and cheat by putting a fair bit of solder onto the tip before touching and also add a tiny bit of extra flux to the joint before heating. I use a tooth pick to add a bit of flux when required.

Not as good as using the correct tip but adding the extra solder is sort of like having a bigger tip.

Anyway opinions are like bums. We all have one

Getting back to the original subject, I saw this image on ebay today, the seller knows he has messed up.    
He was selling his 5" Drone for parts, although a lot of them were already shot.

(07-Sep-2020, 03:18 PM)Droneranger Wrote: Getting back to the original subject, I saw this image on ebay today, the seller knows he has messed up.

(07-Sep-2020, 03:18 PM)Droneranger Wrote: Getting back to the original subject, I saw this image on ebay today, the seller knows he has messed up.

I ... what ... how?!

(07-Sep-2020, 03:18 PM)Droneranger Wrote: Getting back to the original subject, I saw this image on ebay today, the seller knows he has messed up.

Mad soldering skills

(07-Sep-2020, 03:18 PM)Droneranger Wrote: Getting back to the original subject, I saw this image on ebay today, the seller knows he has messed up.
He was selling his 5" Drone for parts, although a lot of them were already shot.

That photo actually made me feel sick...

Nice find!

Thought I'd share my own terrible soldering here... You can see where it led. Learned a lot though, so hopefully the next one doesn't explode.

• Lead-free solder is very hard to work with, especially as a beginner. Plus mine didn't even have any flux in it.
  
• I was using a tip that's too small.
  
• When I got leaded and rosin-cored solder wire, I was letting it heat up for too long and it would evaporate the flux making a lot of peaks.
  
• I think I damaged a part of the board by bridging stuff because I was using too much solder.
  
• I used liquid flux and didn't clean it before plugging it in, making mini-sparks everywhere.
  
• Use a working mat...
  
• Use a smoke stopper! Although I have no idea if that would've helped here, but better to be safe than sorry
  

(11-Apr-2021, 05:20 PM)Ecoste Wrote: Thought I'd share my own terrible soldering here... You can see where it led. Learned a lot though, so hopefully the next one doesn't explode.

• Lead-free solder is very hard to work with, especially as a beginner. Plus mine didn't even have any flux in it.
  
• I was using a tip that's too small.
  
• When I got leaded and rosin-cored solder wire, I was letting it heat up for too long and it would evaporate the flux making a lot of peaks.
  
• I think I damaged a part of the board by bridging stuff because I was using too much solder.
  
• I used liquid flux and didn't clean it before plugging it in, making mini-sparks everywhere.
  
• Use a working mat...
  
• Use a smoke stopper! Although I have no idea if that would've helped here, but better to be safe than sorry
  

All very good points. I would recommend definitely using a standard leaded solder around the 60/40 to 63/37 compound.

The biggest pointer that got me better at soldering was get in and out as soon as possible, and if it's not working out in a few seconds then get out and come back in a few minutes when everythings cooled.

I wrote a big thing of tips for you but deleted it lol, theres plenty of great advice on the forum here already, just get some practice and get rid of that horrid lead free solder and you'll be soldering great in no time.

Also don't cheap out on solder, I got some stuff on ebay a few years back and the mix of materials in the solder varied and you'd get some parts that wouldn't melt and others that would. Not worth ruining electronics over!

i watched a history documentation xD in the past when they started to produce copper, they was limited to receive all of it by heatup enough. it was needed to receive above 1000degrees, airflow was needed to get there. even than the wasnt able to get out alot until they used "manganese" (if i remember well) as flux and was able to get much more out of the arch, by less needed heat.

seems the amount of flux does also affect to the needed heat, its not that easy to compare all solderjobs with different material and gear.

there would be more difficult solder jobs as example it needs a lot more heat to solder with silver.

use a lot flux to solder! and for the topic, do not use manganese :-)

I did a lot of soldering in the past but maybe only a few times in the last five years or so. Always used a Hakko station the last one was a 936D the one before the 888D. Recently as I've found this hobby it's given me the excuse to upgrade to a FX951 station. Probably overkill if you're not using a station every few days/weeks. I could see where it would have saved me countless hours in the past with some tough jobs we had. 

More to the point or tip, get yourself a bent tip or J style. You can throw it in at all kinds of angles to do touchup or reach around adjacent pins, parts or other wires you've soldered. This one is also chisel which is also a must for a straight tip. The straighter chisels are great because at the wider part you can do heavy work like grounds or battery. But on the narrow side get in tight board level. But with the bent chisel you have more angles of attack to get in there which also helps if you're under a magnifier with little room to work.