Soldering

A very useful session was held on 13th July.

David brought along an old, but very reliable, soldering station.  Mosts of those attending have exerience of soldering and have had bad results. We all learned a lot from the session.

The soldering Iron. Needs to be hot enough. Newer equipment has options including a temperature gauge. 180 - 200 degrees was recommended.

The tip needs to be kept clean. We all agreed that our tips were dirty! We then discoered that cleaning the tip with sandpaper or other abrasive was not good as tis removed the protective coating and caused more problems. 

Fluxed solder was recommended as the flux acts as a cleaning agent. Liquid flux as a separate entity is available from DCC Concepts but the use of 'Plunbers Flux' was discouraged as this leaves the joint messy.

We were shown how to properly 'tin' the wires. A technique which produced a much better result than we have achieved. Puting a little kink in the wire enables the wire to sit closer to the track.

Ensuring the track is clean where the joint is to be made is essential. I'm sure we (almost) always do that!

Tinning the track and then using some form of gripper (moodified clothes peg, or a clip) to hold the wire to the track. Useful tip as none of us has more than 2 hands, and it needs 3. One for the wire. one for the solder and one for the iron!

Let the join cool naturally! 

 

Hopefully we'll get some photos to add to this in due course.