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Post by davyk on Apr 11, 2018 15:08:14 GMT
I've been messing about with a beginners electronics book - have a breadboard , multimeter and components as listed in the book to perform some simple exercises to learn the basics.
Lately I've been thinking of getting into soldering and desoldering to be able to perform some simple jobs such as :
button battery replacement in SNES cartridges replacing a broken switch on an Atari 2600
After that I might progress to some simple mods and maybe simpler repairs after that (dry joints, maybe recapping) - but one step at a time.
I have special bits for opening consoles and cartridges but I'm assuming I need a desoldering gun and a soldering iron.
Any tips on equipment? rating for an appropriate soldering iron for example?
Thanks in advance.
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Post by atolm on Apr 12, 2018 4:42:12 GMT
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Post by davyk on Apr 12, 2018 12:53:22 GMT
Is there nothing at entry level? Wouldn't want to spend that sort of coin when looking to try this out.
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Post by zyrobs on Apr 12, 2018 13:20:21 GMT
You could go for some of those Chinese knockoffs which are significantly cheaper. But keep in mind that low quality tools will make It much difficult to work with. They won't be able to keep their thermals right, they don't have the power/performance to keep up with a given temperature when applying it to solder/pcb. This makes them harder to work with and it can also damage the stuff you are working on as you need higher temps to make up for this, and/or keep the iron on for a longer time than needed. I have two soldering irons, one standalone high quality one, and a crappy one built into my desoldering station. The weaker one has to be tuned up to ~400C to properly work with things that the other one can quickly do at sub-300C. They both output the same temps, but the crappy one just doesn't have the performance to keep up the temps as it is applied to stuff you work on. edit: also, I recommend using chisel tips.  |
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Post by davyk on Apr 12, 2018 15:40:16 GMT
Hmmm..
Thinking I might go cheap first and try putting together some of those "easy to make" self-contained project kits first. Then go up-market if I find I can handle it and fancy doing some of those tasks I mentioned earlier.
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Post by atolm on Apr 13, 2018 4:07:22 GMT
I'd at least spring for a nice soldering station, like the FX-888D. I'm not a fan of tossing money at cheap tools I don't plan on keeping for the long term.
The desoldering gun is more of a luxury item. You could get away with using wick braid and one of those manual sucker pumps.
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