Think You Know Everything About Soldering?

[Joshua] has frequent discussions about his soldering techniques with viewers of his YouTube channel. He finally decided to interview [Randy Rubinstein] who is the president of SRA Soldering. In nearly an hour, they talk about everything from solder alloys to proper temperature. They also talk about lead exposure, flux cleaning, and lead-free solder.

They also talk about strategies for rework with lead-free and using special solder for removing SMD components. Honestly, although the first frame of the video says “your solder sucks,” we didn’t really find any earth-shattering revelations about something everyone’s doing wrong. We did, however, find a lot of good advice and some interesting details about things like the uses for different solder alloys.

The interview focuses on soldering with a contact iron, although hot air is seeing more use among hobbyists. However, using a regular iron is still a basic and necessary skill, even if you won’t use it for every job if you have hot air or a reflow oven.

If you really want a soldering tutorial, the Pace one is an oldie but a goodie. We’ve also talked about soldering metallurgy before, if you want to learn more about it.

Filed under: tool hacks

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