In a pinch, if you need a small diameter solder but you only have the larger diameter solder, a trick I personally discovered is to simply pull and stretch a length of the solder, making it a smaller diameter; the rosin core stretches with it too -- it really works quite well!
Don't even listen to these negative people. You've covered absolutely everything that was necessary. All your warnings and comments were necessary. Thanks for spending time and sharing with us.
What I really appreciate about the 3 soldering tutorials is the reinforcement it has provided the methods I have been using. Been soldering electronics for about 30-ish years, and it is nice to know I am not the only one who feels soldering results are a testament to quality, care and workmanship.
Videos like this have given me the courage and ability to tackle smaller smd assembly jobs. Like you said, it really isn't that hard. I did 3 so8 packages todayas well as some small ceramic caps. Thank you.
You know, I was watching the first Matrix movie today, thinking that would be so awesome if you could just instantly download the ability to do anything into your head with their technology. Then I realized, TH-cam is pretty close to just that.
Long time viewer, think I joined on EEVBlog #8...I think you've done and continue to do a massive service for the community and I'm happy to buy you a sandwich to keep you going.
Thank you, Dave! I have been following your channel for years but have never left a comment. I learned to solder at 10 (I repaired my NES clone), but my soldering always sucked. Most of the time I didn't like the end results. Watching your soldering tutorial was like a final blow for me: something clicked in my had. After watching the last part of the tutorial I took a cheap Chinese Arduino Nano clone which came with unsoldered pins and tried to solder them in following your advices. The end result is beautiful: it looks as if the pins were soldered by the manufacturer. Am I so grateful that I cannot describe it! Blessings from Ukraine!
Try tinning all the pads before you solder a big chip, then just press each pin into the solder with a dry iron. The results are as good as reflow, I've done thousands now! Great series!
Took a Pace certified surface mount class in college and some of the solder connections would not meet the certification requirement. His technique is spot on. Recommend cleaning pads and adding flux earlier in the process, last I checked flux isn't that expensive. Excellent drag attempt, try using a smaller tip.. Decent solder paste example. 1st 2 pins looked lacking but was corrected prior to adding heat. ADD FLUX, ADD FLUX, ADD FLUX.
totally agree, always flux the clean board his previous video he claims not to flux and not to put solder on the tip because you will burn off the flux doesn't matter if you have fluxed the job
Thank you so much for those soldering tutorials... I'm a beginner in electronics, and after several attemps over the years I always sucked bad at soldering. Now, 5 minutes ago, I finished soldering 14 wires on an SMD chip (destroying 3 other chips in the process but still), which I never thought would be possible for my clumsy self. All thanks to you! Cheers from Canada!
Dave, just wanted to say: your tutorial on how to do SMT work helped me to put together a board of my own design recently. Thanks for doing this video! Super helpful!
Hey man.. thanks for this video.. I had the opportunity to move from a job conformal coating PCBSs to a career in electronics repair and technician work. my one weakness was SMT work. being a hobbiest (instead of a tertiary qualified graduate) I'd only really ever worked through hole.. Thanks to the quick guides you made I now have a much better position.. Thank you Sir. I do hope to buy you a beer some day :)
Just wanted to say thank you. This video is how I learned to do SMD soldering and has opened up a whole new world for my modular synth. I really appreciate it.
I about to have to reflow a a 32pin ZIF flat cable connector. I think this video has given me the courage to give it a try. Saving a $650 DJI Isnpire 1 transmitter with a $2 part sounds like a plan :)
Excellent video! I recently needed to assemble some prototype PCBs (high power LED drivers) - my components included some 0805s, some SOT23s and a few SOD323s. I spoke to a professional friend who gave me some general good advice (he described "tack and re-flow" and gave me some lead-free thin solder). Then I found Dave's video which actually showed me how. It was enough to give me the confidence and technique to do it...and all three boards worked first time. Thanks Dave & EEVblog!
You are the Bob Ross of soldering, and I mean that in the best possible way! I was intimidated by my first through-hole kit, which went swimmingly after watching the first two vids. Now I've received another very simple kit, but with a few SMT resistors, and I was intimidated again. Not any more after watching your vid. Thanks!
Thanks to your soldering tutorials I can now properly solder stuff. I've been using a soldering iron since I was a little boy but nobody taught me the right technique. And thanks to now being able to solder the right way I could repair my bricked Asus eee PC netbook which overheated during BIOS update. I could desolder the SO-8 flash chip, rewrite it with the help of a Raspberry Pi and solder it back in without damaging the chip or mainboard. All thanks to your excellent videos Dave! ;)
Dave: Thankyou for posting this vid - I it's an old one now but I find myself rewatching this every few months or so, when I've let those fine-tuned skills atrophy and I need a refresher :) Thanks for sharing the tricks to make this stuff! :)
Dave, THANK YOU … SO MUCH for your tireless and very well prepared video. You show a great deal of enthusiasm and encouragement for the newbies. I sincerely appreciate your fun, honest, thorough and encouraging tone in these videos. Absolutely wonderful series and in general, your videos are GREAT and really show how much you care about your audience and the passion shows. THANK YOU! I learned a great deal.
For surface mount soldering, the secret to success is not thin solder, as most amateurs think, but using very liberal amounts of flux. Applying flux first and touching the pad/component with a tinned tip (which needn't be fine at all really) gives you perfect solder joints fast. Big fan of these videos but there's always room for improvement. :)
Dave- thanks for publishing this. It was really informative, and to be honest until I watched your video I didn’t realize this sort of thing was possible at home. It’s really opened up doors to me, and thanks to your efforts it helped inspire me to build my Lidar project that I’ve just put up on my own channel and have been talking about on your forum. Thanks again, and much appreciated!
Thanks for making this approachable. Very glad you showed both how to do i right and what can go wrong. Having a something to compare on your own is invaluable!
All three video's are fantastic! Basically learn to solder in 90 mins.Aomething that always intimadated me. Now I have all the confidence I need to do a project of any kind. Great job Dave and thank you!
I fucking love every bloody video this lad has out. People flak all over and mull about Oh his voice is too high. blah blah you're not explaining everything blah blah I for one have learned so god damn much about my trade just by following his direction and knowledge Cheers
+Johnny Codemunch I'm such an electronics noob myself, and have very little knowledge of components, soldering, schematics and DC designs; yet for the past 2 weeks of viewing almost every single video on Dave's channel, it's inspired me to spend over £600 (GBP) on a mini electronics lab so far, and I'm still buying stuff for it. You can learn so much from this channel. The advice is fantastic, the content is informative, the guides are understandable, the knowledge gained is insane. Even for a newcomer. You can start from nothing and end up with such a vast array of electronics design/engineering knowledge from just viewing Dave's videos and the EEV Blog forum. Finally starting a project on creating a homemade DC power supply, thanks to this channel
+Kyle247l I too have just restarted playing with electronics again at the age of 71. The problem is I keep buying bits, then view his videos, only to learn that what I have bought is utter, utter garbage.
Cliff Woolston aha. Same here. Terrible solder, terrible flux, terrible desoldering braid, and a plug-in iron, while using an actual heat gun as a rework tool, but I'm only 20 years old right now, and I made these mistakes at 15 years old. We all learn from our mistakes though!
This is an awesome video. It has prepared me for an FM transmitter project. Now I feel more confident about soldering the components to the board. Thank you.
Great tutorial, I'm not really new to soldering, but never done such precise SMD soldering. Going to solder a new BIOS chip to revive an old laptop of mine. Lets see how it turns out! Can't wait!
If you do a lot of soldering and de-soldering, you're bound to use a lot of flux, in which case I suggest making your own. It's dirt cheap and really easy, just dissolve a pre-measured amount of rosin, also known as colophonium and pine resin, and dissolve it in a certain amount of denatured alcohol or isopropanol. You can even make flux in different concentrations that way, ranging from 40% (ideal for soaking de-soldering braid in when de-soldering SMT chips) to 85% sticky syrup.
@@andrewthecelt3794 would you say 0805 is doable if one has never smd soldered before? (seeing the size of these things i'm kinda worried i wont be able to make ut without practicing a ton first?)
Really awesome video dude. Learned lots of new things. Liquid flux, dragging method, more info about hot air and solder paste. That tip that holds the solder... never heard of that and been in electronics for 36 years. You have a very nice way of explaining the subject.
Try using paste solder on SMTs. Basically a mix of flux and solder beads, and you can apply to each pad with a syringe. We used that for SMTs, put the solder down, placed and held the component and then flowed the solder by hand with a micro tip iron.
Thanks for this series of videos! - It's been a few years since I last soldered anything and wanted to actually get my technique right rather than just trying every method until it works.
Based on your video, I bought a well tip for surface mount soldering - works great! It makes drag soldering so much easier. Thanks for the great videos.
Some types need to be cleaned up after soldering, but most of them evaporates perfectly leaving no appreciable rosin layer. They are called no-clean types.
neppy5 It depends. Usually not but if you need to conformal your pcb then you will need to remove the flux residue. No clean fluxes still leave a residue that can be cleaned off for a better conformal coating. Most hobby boards will not need conformal coating.
lol You make it look so easy. I’m okay at it now, but the first couple times... yeah. Life advice worth considering. If a new task is frustrating you, put it all down for a bit and step back for a few. Great video.
The peak temp in our oven is set at 245 ºC most components are rated at 260 nowadays. That's lead free process. Offcourse when soldering by hand there's a thing called temperature shock but that never appears to be a problem. The most sensitive are the electrolites which are sometimes rated at 240 something then you need a special oven program to solder them. Sometimes we use 'hats' made of kapton tape to shield the elco's a bit. Some time ago there was an order containing those really old philips rectangular flat lying electrolites at the lead free temp those things popped like popcorn.
I don't know if it was mentioned in the comments, but what you did with the DPAK larger pad is called a heat bridge and its an absolute must for a lot of other stuff that is attached to one or more ground planes, like connectors and cables. Using flux also helps transferring heat to the parts.
EEVblog Hi Dave, I am enjoying this video series on soldering very much. My dad taught me to solder by giving me old electronics and an old Weller RED iron to struggle with, and would let me sit there till I had stripped that board clean , shows him and re-assembled it as it was. Man, that was a steep learning curve. My Reward - MY choice of project from DiCK HeadSmith's Funway 2 book and the book it'self. And I bult them all. The Shortwave Radio was the most interesting one I found in that book, the most complicated, etc. but it had infinite treakability. You should do this one as a video, or even a Jaycar kit vid just to show that it can be done.
Dick Smith Funway kits REALLY opened up the scene to people back in that era, from young kids right through to adults. Started to dabble with the Jaycar kits later on down the track but when everything became PIC this and PIC that, I began to lose interest since you could no longer build something without programming it first.
Good video but please don´t be offended, The tip used to solder SMD items in this video is TOO BIG!!!, with a small solder tip you can get a better solder quality!!!
I would disagree. The chisel tip is right for the soic8 as it heats both the leg and the pad simultaneously. The 'well' (or wave) tip is perfect for the fine pitch IC. I think you may also be being tricked by the magnification.
Ian Montgomery The tip used to solder a pic24fj256ga106-i/pt 64 pin (each pin has 0.22 mm )must be as shown in the link lines below 1/64" conical tip to avoid jointed leads on the SMD PIC: paceworldwide.com/products/tips-and-nozzles/soldering-iron-tips/ps90-tips/ps90-soldering-tips/164-in-conical-tip-357. Mi comment is due to I saw when you´re are soldering the PIC and 2 leads are jointed with solder (min 20:20) Regards!!!
eduarsan1 We use wave/well tips (these have a 4.5mm well) for QFP hand soldering (we usually use a placement machine except for protos) or alternatively we will use hot air. If you have a lot of flux over the leads you wish to solder then the job becomes easier.
Very nice video! I started out with applying solder on pads and tack as shown in the video. Doing some (400+) 40 pin + IC's, I've learned to apply a tinning layer of solder on one leg, not the pad, then its easy to place the IC absolutely centered. Then Touch the iron to the tinned leg centered holding it in place and finally fully soldered in about 20 seconds, looking like a machine did it. Maybe one day I'll make a video showing this described and other tips I've learned on the job.
You have me reminiscing of my training for my (now expired) soldering cert. We used that exact drag method when we had to solder the our 100 pin QFP IC. I don't know what the pitch was, but it was a tight pitch. We were running at almost 400 Celsius.
They don't normally shake. The combination of havign to hold the iron at an extended lenght and low angle to fit under the camera and mag glass, and talking at watching the screen at the same time...
This is the first of Dave's videos that I saw. Found it when researching hand SMD soldering. Great video, thanks Dave! You're right: it is a piece of cake! I've done 0402 components and even some QFN packages (with hot air) and it's great fun! :)
Thank you so much for these, I've realised why all my soldering has been crap and I gave up, I always soldered the tip first, had a crap iron an was using cheap crappy solder, I can't wait to give this another go as I love building electronics kits but gave up because of my bad experience, Thank You Again!
Did you know? if you dont align the components on the pad and the value written on them with the markings on the board, the electrons wont flow properly
Remember the SMT component "MUST NOT" sit hard on the pad, but must float on the solder. There is a intermetalic layer between the copper and the solder (copper crystals) that forms and this layer is brittle, but it does hold the solder to the pad and component. The longer the iron is on the joint the more the intermetalic grows (remember it is a brittle layer) so not to long on the joint with the iron, the brittle layer continues to grow with time and heat and that's why equipment fails due to a crack in the joint or in the brittle layer.
Nice tutorial. I've been having a heck of a time with my soldering, but these three videos showed me how to do correctly, and made me realize that I've just been making it hard on myself. Thank you. I actually came to watch these vids, because I've been watching you for a long time, but I saw Ben Heck do his Dave Jones Speak N' Say, and it reminded me I hadn't seen one of your videos in a while. I thought I was subscribed and I wondered why I hadn't seen a video in a while. I searched up your channel, and I had forgotten to click the button. The only reason I got your videos at all is because they're in my recommended. Anyway, I'm properly subscribed now, and I won't be missing anymore of you in the future!
I'm sure you're aware of how Stevie Wonder lost his eyesight. He was an up and coming soldering apprentice in his dear fathers's soldering factory when one morning, as young Stevie, as they called him, was working away soldering a resistor. He had filled the well of his soldering iron with solder when, suddenly, a co-worker who possibly had too much coffee that morning, bumped into young Stevie. Solder heated to more than 1200°c splashed into his eyes leaving him not only blind, but also unable to practice his first love of hand-soldering. So try to be more sensitive about blind people's abilities. Luckily Stevie Wonder had this whole music thing to fall back on, but that shit musta hurt lika a mofo!
This is no reflow soldring! For reflow soldering you need a soldering paste and a reflow oven. When you heat up parts like in this video, most of them are damaged after your soldering.
Ian Montgomery This is defenetly not a resoldering process. The reflow soldering is a defined process where you use a soldering paste and an ofen to solder the components to their soldering pads. When you use a soldering iron it's not a reflow soldering, even if the soldering tin is liquid again. Use google if you don't trust me. You will not find any description with a soldering iron and soldering tin (manual solder) using the word "reflow". The reflow process uses low temperatures to protect the components from getting to hot.
Nice technique! I'm sorry though, I can't stop staring at that lifted pad. You should seriously consider instruction! You're fun to listen to, a joy to watch and a natural teacher. Awesome vid!
@30:20 you talk about the "hot air solder level board" being lumpier and not as flush. A trick I used when soldering on home etched boards was first tinning the boards by fluxing them, and then dragging solder everywhere to tin them. No matter how little solder I would try to use, they would invariably have the kind of lumps you are talking about in some spots. The trick was to then use solder-wick to "remove all the solder from the pads" It would remove all the lumps, but there would still be an infinitesimally thin layer of solder on the pads. (they were still silver, but were now "flush") Now my ICs would lay flat and could be soldered using the methods described in the rest of your video. I would guess that that trick would also work with manufactured boards of the type you are talking about at 30:20
This is an "Crazy Aussie Bloke" and so he "has to talk much and crazy" :D It's his habit and "trademark" of these videos :) If you don't like it, there are tons of "serious" and "sad" video tutorials out there ;) Once I saw the first EEV video I also thought "what the...." but then it became funny :D Especially the parts where he breaks something accidently or turn something apart.
TheThore Yes I agree with You, but i still watched the videos, D is very savy and yes also very funny. the point is, sometimes he talkes too much about obvious stuff that really yields to boring. I also appreciate signalpath blog, mjlorton and my best fav. w2aew. thanx.
Personally I am a big fan of tinning the solder pads prior to mounting the surface mount components. Sometime when we have boards made we will get the boards already tinned, but if not then I would tin them and then use the solder wick to clean it up. That leaves a very slight layer of solder. Then when I go to mount the component I can use either tweezers or a dental pick to put downward pressure on the component while I apply heat to the pad. It is just enough to make it stick while you solder the other side and then you come back and apply solder to the first side.
It's great that you are showing this for everyone, because everyone fears it so much, but these joints would never pass rework QA in most reputable places. You should really get a finer tip (one with a slight angle at the end will make this heavenly to do, but don't put that bend in yourself, because you'll crack the nickel coating) and use steel picks to "drag" out solder that is shorting close pins. Solder wants to flow toward the heat, and the steel will stay cool enough long enough to allow this, allowing you to move fast with just quick reflowing. Using the wick is a very bad idea for most of these pads. They lift way too easily after several re-heats, especially with such an over-sized tip. And, that wick will spread the heat to other pads, at the same time. And, there is just a tendency for people to pull the iron away before the wick, cooling the solder just enough to start to solidify, and thereby yanking on the pads. Also, keep adding resin flux, each re-heat. The flux helps to de-ox the surfaces. Clean-up is just a fact of life, when doing this stuff. Back in the day, we would use Freon with an acid brush and special tissue wrapped around it, which was really fast and easy... alcohol is the second best thing, though, now that Freon is outlawed. Also, leaving the lifted pad in place and relying solely on that joint is not the best idea. A proper tracewire fix would be recommended once you have a lifted pad. The damage is done and unknown. Don't count on things continuing to work well or for long once heated/cooled enough, after damage has occurred.
I love you Man! Your enthousiasm is contagious and inspiring. You've taught me so much already these past weeks, watching several of your tutorials a day. You're my favourite teacher at the moment, can't get enough of your stuff :-D
Great stuff as usual Dave. On the D packs I prefer to apply solder to the ground plane and reflow the component onto the board and then do the legs. Regards Trevor
No disrespect, all your videos are great and very informative, at the same time we should share good tips, and ideas when we can. I usually use a small piece of masking tape to hold the part in place and apply a tiny amount of solder, I find it suits me much better and no need for both hands, no need for tweezers, and shaky hands can dislodge the parts whilst soldering and you end up with parts not being straight and center, which looks a bad job . One thing is I do not recommend applying any solder to the pads, a component should sit straight and flat if there is no solder on the pad, so you get a small piece of masking tape and stick it half way over the SMT part, covering only half of it, so that you keep the side to be soldered first exposed, place it over the pad and press down the masking tape to the board, this will now hold the part in place and not allow it to move as you bring your solder and hot iron tip to the joint. As the solder melts, with the help of flux it will just flow nicely covering the pad and the pin, leaving a nice clear shiney joint . One more thing avoid re-heating a joint without fresh solder as reheating causes solder to cling to the iron tip as the flux has been used up, so without fresh flux the solder will wick out, and leave a poor quality joint, also with the masking tape there is less risk of a part moving as the solder starts to dry, which could cause a poor unreliable joint. I have had no problems using 0.7mm wide solder. and I have also soldered the tiniest part the same way using masking tape.
+Jayant Desai I have also found your methods to be more reliable for clean work. The masking tape holds the part down cleanly, and all the effort is in the initial tape-down; once the tape is in place correctly you can work without having to align the tweezers every time. Using tape does require that you do not tin the pads, as the above poster noted. I've also found tinning the pads to be counterproductive, as then you can't lay the part down evenly and cleanly.
Hi Dave thank you for the last 3 Soldering Tutorial's I really thought it would be impossible to solder surface mount components. Thanks for all the tips Dave. Kind regards Steve.
I'm still amazed at the number of thru-hole kits that are advertised as "easy to make, no surface mount parts". In my experience of teaching people to solder, they will complete a surface version of a board in about half the time with half the mistakes and virtually no dry joints. I usually use 1206 just to keep it easy for them in a workshop. I hate thru-hole because of the messy results, legs that move, flipping the board. Urg! I don't know how anyone can design in it anymore.
My method of soldering two lead (resistor, cap) SOT chips. I tin both pads on the board, I then drop the SOT on the pads (mostly centered), use two pencil irons (one in each hand) and reflow. Let surface tension center the SOT. I can get it to work about 90% of the time. Most mistakes is when one of the irons "wicks" the part up when the iron is removed.
@ryantheleach Not a special iron, just one that has those tips available. Some brands do, some don't. I don't normally shake, I have very steady hands, but trying to think, talk, and watch the camera all at the same time under a very cramped magnifiying glass and stradling video camera/tripod setup while standing up makes it hard to keep stready. It's not my normal soldering position by any stretch!
when you are acctually soldering heatsinks or extra thick lanes cause there is a lot of current flowing through there you could instead of using higher temperatures use two soldering irons at the same 350 degrees celcius temperature. cauce you are using two soldering irons you have twice amount of heat transfer and twice the amount of power your soldering station can deliver to the iron. This method helped me while reparing a board wich has a large heatsink on it that was broken loose.
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In a pinch, if you need a small diameter solder but you only have the larger diameter solder, a trick I personally discovered is to simply pull and stretch a length of the solder, making it a smaller diameter; the rosin core stretches with it too -- it really works quite well!
Wow! You have a real life wire stretcher!
I thought I was the only one who did this! lol
@@mikestribling7574 Great! You're the only other person I know of who also said they discovered that trick!😃
Don't even listen to these negative people. You've covered absolutely everything that was necessary. All your warnings and comments were necessary. Thanks for spending time and sharing with us.
What I really appreciate about the 3 soldering tutorials is the reinforcement it has provided the methods I have been using. Been soldering electronics for about 30-ish years, and it is nice to know I am not the only one who feels soldering results are a testament to quality, care and workmanship.
Videos like this have given me the courage and ability to tackle smaller smd assembly jobs. Like you said, it really isn't that hard. I did 3 so8 packages todayas well as some small ceramic caps. Thank you.
It's like watching a coked up engineering version of Bob Ross' "The Joy of Painting." I love it!
+Nicholas DeLessio I'm laughing so hard TY! I'm twitching now myself!!! The joy of painting with crack........:)
That explains why EEVblog give me ASMR sensations.
It is very very inspiring indeed, really brings across how much fun in fact there really is in doing electronics :-)
th-cam.com/video/P2-Dd6pv8Oc/w-d-xo.html
"Now let's just add in a happy little solder joint... There"
You know, I was watching the first Matrix movie today, thinking that would be so awesome if you could just instantly download the ability to do anything into your head with their technology. Then I realized, TH-cam is pretty close to just that.
@@mondo_burrito Lol. I don't remember this video or leaving this comment so I'd say chances are high.
Long time viewer, think I joined on EEVBlog #8...I think you've done and continue to do a massive service for the community and I'm happy to buy you a sandwich to keep you going.
Thank you, Dave! I have been following your channel for years but have never left a comment.
I learned to solder at 10 (I repaired my NES clone), but my soldering always sucked. Most of the time I didn't like the end results. Watching your soldering tutorial was like a final blow for me: something clicked in my had. After watching the last part of the tutorial I took a cheap Chinese Arduino Nano clone which came with unsoldered pins and tried to solder them in following your advices. The end result is beautiful: it looks as if the pins were soldered by the manufacturer.
Am I so grateful that I cannot describe it!
Blessings from Ukraine!
Try tinning all the pads before you solder a big chip, then just press each pin into the solder with a dry iron. The results are as good as reflow, I've done thousands now!
Great series!
Took a Pace certified surface mount class in college and some of the solder connections would not meet the certification requirement. His technique is spot on. Recommend cleaning pads and adding flux earlier in the process, last I checked flux isn't that expensive. Excellent drag attempt, try using a smaller tip.. Decent solder paste example. 1st 2 pins looked lacking but was corrected prior to adding heat. ADD FLUX, ADD FLUX, ADD FLUX.
totally agree, always flux the clean board his previous video he claims not to flux and not to put solder on the tip because you will burn off the flux doesn't matter if you have fluxed the job
Thank you for your time in giving us all your version of How To Soldering Parts 1,2 & 3.Have a nice day.
Thank you so much for those soldering tutorials... I'm a beginner in electronics, and after several attemps over the years I always sucked bad at soldering. Now, 5 minutes ago, I finished soldering 14 wires on an SMD chip (destroying 3 other chips in the process but still), which I never thought would be possible for my clumsy self. All thanks to you! Cheers from Canada!
I think it's great the way the presenter is perpetually surprised, joking aside awesome enthusiasm, nice to see.
Dave, just wanted to say: your tutorial on how to do SMT work helped me to put together a board of my own design recently. Thanks for doing this video! Super helpful!
Hey man.. thanks for this video.. I had the opportunity to move from a job conformal coating PCBSs to a career in electronics repair and technician work. my one weakness was SMT work. being a hobbiest (instead of a tertiary qualified graduate) I'd only really ever worked through hole.. Thanks to the quick guides you made I now have a much better position.. Thank you Sir. I do hope to buy you a beer some day :)
Just wanted to say thank you. This video is how I learned to do SMD soldering and has opened up a whole new world for my modular synth. I really appreciate it.
I about to have to reflow a a 32pin ZIF flat cable connector. I think this video has given me the courage to give it a try. Saving a $650 DJI Isnpire 1 transmitter with a $2 part sounds like a plan :)
Excellent video! I recently needed to assemble some prototype PCBs (high power LED drivers) - my components included some 0805s, some SOT23s and a few SOD323s. I spoke to a professional friend who gave me some general good advice (he described "tack and re-flow" and gave me some lead-free thin solder). Then I found Dave's video which actually showed me how. It was enough to give me the confidence and technique to do it...and all three boards worked first time. Thanks Dave & EEVblog!
You are the Bob Ross of soldering, and I mean that in the best possible way! I was intimidated by my first through-hole kit, which went swimmingly after watching the first two vids. Now I've received another very simple kit, but with a few SMT resistors, and I was intimidated again. Not any more after watching your vid. Thanks!
Thanks to your soldering tutorials I can now properly solder stuff. I've been using a soldering iron since I was a little boy but nobody taught me the right technique. And thanks to now being able to solder the right way I could repair my bricked Asus eee PC netbook which overheated during BIOS update. I could desolder the SO-8 flash chip, rewrite it with the help of a Raspberry Pi and solder it back in without damaging the chip or mainboard. All thanks to your excellent videos Dave! ;)
Dave: Thankyou for posting this vid - I it's an old one now but I find myself rewatching this every few months or so, when I've let those fine-tuned skills atrophy and I need a refresher :)
Thanks for sharing the tricks to make this stuff! :)
Just went, desoldered and resoldered my LCD display after watching your videos, with amazing results. Thanks a lot!
Dave, THANK YOU … SO MUCH for your tireless and very well prepared video. You show a great deal of enthusiasm and encouragement for the newbies. I sincerely appreciate your fun, honest, thorough and encouraging tone in these videos. Absolutely wonderful series and in general, your videos are GREAT and really show how much you care about your audience and the passion shows. THANK YOU! I learned a great deal.
Thumbs up for rescuing this video Dave :) I am perfectly comfortable with soldering, but I still enjoyed every minute of this video. Thanks!
For surface mount soldering, the secret to success is not thin solder, as most amateurs think, but using very liberal amounts of flux. Applying flux first and touching the pad/component with a tinned tip (which needn't be fine at all really) gives you perfect solder joints fast. Big fan of these videos but there's always room for improvement. :)
Dave- thanks for publishing this. It was really informative, and to be honest until I watched your video I didn’t realize this sort of thing was possible at home. It’s really opened up doors to me, and thanks to your efforts it helped inspire me to build my Lidar project that I’ve just put up on my own channel and have been talking about on your forum. Thanks again, and much appreciated!
Thanks for making this approachable. Very glad you showed both how to do i right and what can go wrong. Having a something to compare on your own is invaluable!
All three video's are fantastic! Basically learn to solder in 90 mins.Aomething that always intimadated me. Now I have all the confidence I need to do a project of any kind. Great job Dave and thank you!
I fucking love every bloody video this lad has out. People flak all over and mull about
Oh his voice is too high. blah blah you're not explaining everything blah blah
I for one have learned so god damn much about my trade just by following his direction and knowledge
Cheers
+Johnny Codemunch
I'm such an electronics noob myself, and have very little knowledge of components, soldering, schematics and DC designs; yet for the past 2 weeks of viewing almost every single video on Dave's channel, it's inspired me to spend over £600 (GBP) on a mini electronics lab so far, and I'm still buying stuff for it.
You can learn so much from this channel. The advice is fantastic, the content is informative, the guides are understandable, the knowledge gained is insane. Even for a newcomer. You can start from nothing and end up with such a vast array of electronics design/engineering knowledge from just viewing Dave's videos and the EEV Blog forum. Finally starting a project on creating a homemade DC power supply, thanks to this channel
+Kyle247l
I too have just restarted playing with electronics again at
the age of 71. The problem is I keep buying bits, then view his videos, only to
learn that what I have bought is utter, utter garbage.
Cliff Woolston
aha. Same here. Terrible solder, terrible flux, terrible desoldering braid, and a plug-in iron, while using an actual heat gun as a rework tool, but I'm only 20 years old right now, and I made these mistakes at 15 years old. We all learn from our mistakes though!
+Cliff Woolston At least if it's utter garbage you don't have to be careful when using it.
я тоже охуел! fuck
Easily the best videos on hand soldering for beginners, I have ever seen.
Brilliant.
I must have watched these 10 times ova now ,such a great set of tutorials .Thank you !!!
This is an awesome video. It has prepared me for an FM transmitter project. Now I feel more confident about soldering the components to the board. Thank you.
I love you, Dave: "Stevie Wonder could solder this thing" :D
A classic video. Exactly how I got my start: by watching the best on the Internet! Thank you for continuing to make great videos!
Im waiting for the BGA soldering tutorial
Great tutorial, I'm not really new to soldering, but never done such precise SMD soldering. Going to solder a new BIOS chip to revive an old laptop of mine. Lets see how it turns out! Can't wait!
Great tutorial, thanks Dave.
If you do a lot of soldering and de-soldering, you're bound to use a lot of flux, in which case I suggest making your own. It's dirt cheap and really easy, just dissolve a pre-measured amount of rosin, also known as colophonium and pine resin, and dissolve it in a certain amount of denatured alcohol or isopropanol. You can even make flux in different concentrations that way, ranging from 40% (ideal for soaking de-soldering braid in when de-soldering SMT chips) to 85% sticky syrup.
"Stevie Wonder could solder these" hahahahahahahaaaa.... 1st joke i have ever heard in a tech vid.. wade a be Davie.
+Greg D I was thinking that I could land a helicopter on those pads. I'm used to doing ultra-fine pitch stuff you need to do under a microscope.
+Andrew the Celt do you hold the iron with your hand or like a robot and joy stick?
nicholas feltman by hand. With practice you can do components with 10mil leads
But can Michael Fox solder that? That's the question.
@@andrewthecelt3794 would you say 0805 is doable if one has never smd soldered before? (seeing the size of these things i'm kinda worried i wont be able to make ut without practicing a ton first?)
Really awesome video dude. Learned lots of new things. Liquid flux, dragging method, more info about hot air and solder paste. That tip that holds the solder... never heard of that and been in electronics for 36 years. You have a very nice way of explaining the subject.
Stevie Wonder could solder this thing!
Try using paste solder on SMTs. Basically a mix of flux and solder beads, and you can apply to each pad with a syringe. We used that for SMTs, put the solder down, placed and held the component and then flowed the solder by hand with a micro tip iron.
Best soldering tutorial ever. Thanks.
Thanks for this series of videos! - It's been a few years since I last soldered anything and wanted to actually get my technique right rather than just trying every method until it works.
Thanks for the tutorial. I feel really confident about doing this now. Thanks again.
J
Based on your video, I bought a well tip for surface mount soldering - works great! It makes drag soldering so much easier. Thanks for the great videos.
Does that extra flux from the flux pen need to be removed when you're finished soldering?
Some types need to be cleaned up after soldering, but most of them evaporates perfectly leaving no appreciable rosin layer. They are called no-clean types.
Péter Kiss
thanks for that tip! I'm new to this and the idea of cleaning flux off a pcb with water and an esd brush really scares me
You should do that with pure alcohol (denaturated ethil) instead of water.
aha! thanks again Péter Kiss
neppy5 It depends. Usually not but if you need to conformal your pcb then you will need to remove the flux residue. No clean fluxes still leave a residue that can be cleaned off for a better conformal coating. Most hobby boards will not need conformal coating.
lol You make it look so easy. I’m okay at it now, but the first couple times... yeah. Life advice worth considering. If a new task is frustrating you, put it all down for a bit and step back for a few.
Great video.
how much heat does components like that withstand?
+Kentrt lots most are a minimum of 800f
The peak temp in our oven is set at 245 ºC most components are rated at 260 nowadays. That's lead free process. Offcourse when soldering by hand there's a thing called temperature shock but that never appears to be a problem. The most sensitive are the electrolites which are sometimes rated at 240 something then you need a special oven program to solder them. Sometimes we use 'hats' made of kapton tape to shield the elco's a bit. Some time ago there was an order containing those really old philips rectangular flat lying electrolites at the lead free temp those things popped like popcorn.
And sometimes some electrolites are soldered by hand afterwards but it's getting more rare thankfully.
I don't know if it was mentioned in the comments, but what you did with the DPAK larger pad is called a heat bridge and its an absolute must for a lot of other stuff that is attached to one or more ground planes, like connectors and cables. Using flux also helps transferring heat to the parts.
+EEVBlog,
When you say 350, do you mean 350 C?
Morahman7vnNo2 Thanks!
Wow! I just watched your video and did my first SMT ever: SOT23. Thank you so much for the demo. Best 15 minutes ever!
very nice and easy too understand Dave. Enjoyed the video and subbed.
He has pretty much every tip you can conceive. He likes the one he is using.
You are a very nice teacher. I like your vedios. :)
it is "videos", v - i - d - e - o - s.
Yeah, that was two years ago. Now I spell correctly. :D
EEVblog Hi Dave, I am enjoying this video series on soldering very much. My dad taught me to solder by giving me old electronics and an old Weller RED iron to struggle with, and would let me sit there till I had stripped that board clean , shows him and re-assembled it as it was. Man, that was a steep learning curve.
My Reward - MY choice of project from DiCK HeadSmith's Funway 2 book and the book it'self. And I bult them all.
The Shortwave Radio was the most interesting one I found in that book, the most complicated, etc. but it had infinite treakability.
You should do this one as a video, or even a Jaycar kit vid just to show that it can be done.
Dick Smith Funway kits REALLY opened up the scene to people back in that era, from young kids right through to adults.
Started to dabble with the Jaycar kits later on down the track but when everything became PIC this and PIC that, I began to lose interest since you could no longer build something without programming it first.
Good video but please don´t be offended, The tip used to solder SMD items in this video is TOO BIG!!!, with a small solder tip you can get a better solder quality!!!
I would disagree. The chisel tip is right for the soic8 as it heats both the leg and the pad simultaneously. The 'well' (or wave) tip is perfect for the fine pitch IC. I think you may also be being tricked by the magnification.
Ian Montgomery The tip used to solder a pic24fj256ga106-i/pt 64 pin (each pin has 0.22 mm )must be as shown in the link lines below 1/64" conical tip to avoid jointed leads on the SMD PIC:
paceworldwide.com/products/tips-and-nozzles/soldering-iron-tips/ps90-tips/ps90-soldering-tips/164-in-conical-tip-357.
Mi comment is due to I saw when you´re are soldering the PIC and 2 leads are jointed with solder (min 20:20)
Regards!!!
eduarsan1
We use wave/well tips (these have a 4.5mm well) for QFP hand soldering (we usually use a placement machine except for protos) or alternatively we will use hot air.
If you have a lot of flux over the leads you wish to solder then the job becomes easier.
Very nice video! I started out with applying solder on pads and tack as shown in the video. Doing some (400+) 40 pin + IC's, I've learned to apply a tinning layer of solder on one leg, not the pad, then its easy to place the IC absolutely centered. Then Touch the iron to the tinned leg centered holding it in place and finally fully soldered in about 20 seconds, looking like a machine did it. Maybe one day I'll make a video showing this described and other tips I've learned on the job.
17:08 did you just kiss your wife? xD
LOL
LOL... well spotted (or.. Heard)
Kissed his wife, are you crazy?
He kissed the soldering station, of course!
@@JC-XL nope . Kissed the soldering iron tip. Way hotter than the wife 😅 😂
You have me reminiscing of my training for my (now expired) soldering cert. We used that exact drag method when we had to solder the our 100 pin QFP IC. I don't know what the pitch was, but it was a tight pitch. We were running at almost 400 Celsius.
use decaff
psoriasisman I don't drink coffee.
psoriasisman Don't be an ass. This is a good video, and the accent is cool.
Rod T. Dont Drink Coffe
psoriasisman cause then you´ll get psoriasis.
tnpsegim dont drink soda
They don't normally shake. The combination of havign to hold the iron at an extended lenght and low angle to fit under the camera and mag glass, and talking at watching the screen at the same time...
Ahhh, David-san! Flux on and Flux off!
This is the first of Dave's videos that I saw. Found it when researching hand SMD soldering. Great video, thanks Dave! You're right: it is a piece of cake! I've done 0402 components and even some QFN packages (with hot air) and it's great fun! :)
Incredible voice
It is infective. I got british from that. Took me several minutes to cure that off.
+Len P ..he's Australian
Jordan Johnson, I know. And you are one of these independence guys?
like "linus tech tips"... after somes mintues i must stop the video ah ah
Thank you so much for these, I've realised why all my soldering has been crap and I gave up, I always soldered the tip first, had a crap iron an was using cheap crappy solder, I can't wait to give this another go as I love building electronics kits but gave up because of my bad experience, Thank You Again!
SMD soldering is really a bear when you have a hangover :)
all dave's smd tutorials really helped me with my boards.
Did you know? if you dont align the components on the pad and the value written on them with the markings on the board, the electrons wont flow properly
Basileus s
I thought I was the only one that realized this, glad somebody else did as well.
The camera was in his way, no doubt.
Remember the SMT component "MUST NOT" sit hard on the pad, but must float on the solder. There is a intermetalic layer between the copper and the solder (copper crystals) that forms and this layer is brittle, but it does hold the solder to the pad and component. The longer the iron is on the joint the more the intermetalic grows (remember it is a brittle layer) so not to long on the joint with the iron, the brittle layer continues to grow with time and heat and that's why equipment fails due to a crack in the joint or in the brittle layer.
good Tutorial :))
@LDBuggy Yeah, you have to be careful with dragging, not to damage the pins. The "poking" method is safer in that respect.
awesome
now desolder it
It's part of Corel Video Studio, just give it the still image (screen capture of the first frame of the video) and it does it all, real easy.
You almost sing/rap when you talk.
once again you've taught me truck loads. thanks a lot. im going to get myself a chisel iron and flux. your videos are awesome.
Stevie Wonder could sew on this thing xD
Nice tutorial. I've been having a heck of a time with my soldering, but these three videos showed me how to do correctly, and made me realize that I've just been making it hard on myself. Thank you. I actually came to watch these vids, because I've been watching you for a long time, but I saw Ben Heck do his Dave Jones Speak N' Say, and it reminded me I hadn't seen one of your videos in a while. I thought I was subscribed and I wondered why I hadn't seen a video in a while. I searched up your channel, and I had forgotten to click the button. The only reason I got your videos at all is because they're in my recommended. Anyway, I'm properly subscribed now, and I won't be missing anymore of you in the future!
I'm sure you're aware of how Stevie Wonder lost his eyesight. He was an up and coming soldering apprentice in his dear fathers's soldering factory when one morning, as young Stevie, as they called him, was working away soldering a resistor. He had filled the well of his soldering iron with solder when, suddenly, a co-worker who possibly had too much coffee that morning, bumped into young Stevie. Solder heated to more than 1200°c splashed into his eyes leaving him not only blind, but also unable to practice his first love of hand-soldering. So try to be more sensitive about blind people's abilities. Luckily Stevie Wonder had this whole music thing to fall back on, but that shit musta hurt lika a mofo!
Wrong lol
Hakko FX888. Solder mask is what's keeps the pins from shorting.
This is no reflow soldring! For reflow soldering you need a soldering paste and a reflow oven. When you heat up parts like in this video, most of them are damaged after your soldering.
*****
I agree with you. Reflow should lessen the prospect of heat damage to components too.
Ian Montgomery
This is defenetly not a resoldering process. The reflow soldering is a defined process where you use a soldering paste and an ofen to solder the components to their soldering pads. When you use a soldering iron it's not a reflow soldering, even if the soldering tin is liquid again. Use google if you don't trust me. You will not find any description with a soldering iron and soldering tin (manual solder) using the word "reflow".
The reflow process uses low temperatures to protect the components from getting to hot.
***** I guess part of the reason is that the ovens used for SMD lines are called reflow ovens so people associate reflow only with SMD.
Martin B. Our reflow oven hits 250C for a very short time.
Yes, might be. Some components (or materials) need higher temperatures than others.
Nice technique! I'm sorry though, I can't stop staring at that lifted pad. You should seriously consider instruction! You're fun to listen to, a joy to watch and a natural teacher. Awesome vid!
This guy has almost 2 hours of this in 3 parts. If he wouldn't jabber so much he could cover all this info in about 20 minutes.
@30:20 you talk about the "hot air solder level board" being lumpier and not as flush.
A trick I used when soldering on home etched boards was first tinning the boards by fluxing them, and then dragging solder everywhere to tin them.
No matter how little solder I would try to use, they would invariably have the kind of lumps you are talking about in some spots.
The trick was to then use solder-wick to "remove all the solder from the pads"
It would remove all the lumps, but there would still be an infinitesimally thin layer of solder on the pads. (they were still silver, but were now "flush")
Now my ICs would lay flat and could be soldered using the methods described in the rest of your video.
I would guess that that trick would also work with manufactured boards of the type you are talking about at 30:20
my god!!!!! this guy talk sooooooooooooooooooo much
This is an "Crazy Aussie Bloke" and so he "has to talk much and crazy" :D It's his habit and "trademark" of these videos :) If you don't like it, there are tons of "serious" and "sad" video tutorials out there ;)
Once I saw the first EEV video I also thought "what the...." but then it became funny :D Especially the parts where he breaks something accidently or turn something apart.
TheThore
Yes I agree with You, but i still watched the videos, D is very savy and yes also very funny.
the point is, sometimes he talkes too much about obvious stuff that really yields to boring.
I also appreciate signalpath blog, mjlorton and my best fav. w2aew.
thanx.
Yes sometimes I fast forward a part, too :D But the "Bloke" is funny and educational. I may check the others out you mentioned. Thank you.
MY GOD!! Your comments are sooooooooo meaningless..
tnpsegim if you were an EE you probably would understand what my comments meant.
Personally I am a big fan of tinning the solder pads prior to mounting the surface mount components. Sometime when we have boards made we will get the boards already tinned, but if not then I would tin them and then use the solder wick to clean it up. That leaves a very slight layer of solder. Then when I go to mount the component I can use either tweezers or a dental pick to put downward pressure on the component while I apply heat to the pad. It is just enough to make it stick while you solder the other side and then you come back and apply solder to the first side.
It's great that you are showing this for everyone, because everyone fears it so much, but these joints would never pass rework QA in most reputable places.
You should really get a finer tip (one with a slight angle at the end will make this heavenly to do, but don't put that bend in yourself, because you'll crack the nickel coating) and use steel picks to "drag" out solder that is shorting close pins. Solder wants to flow toward the heat, and the steel will stay cool enough long enough to allow this, allowing you to move fast with just quick reflowing. Using the wick is a very bad idea for most of these pads. They lift way too easily after several re-heats, especially with such an over-sized tip. And, that wick will spread the heat to other pads, at the same time. And, there is just a tendency for people to pull the iron away before the wick, cooling the solder just enough to start to solidify, and thereby yanking on the pads.
Also, keep adding resin flux, each re-heat. The flux helps to de-ox the surfaces. Clean-up is just a fact of life, when doing this stuff. Back in the day, we would use Freon with an acid brush and special tissue wrapped around it, which was really fast and easy... alcohol is the second best thing, though, now that Freon is outlawed.
Also, leaving the lifted pad in place and relying solely on that joint is not the best idea. A proper tracewire fix would be recommended once you have a lifted pad. The damage is done and unknown. Don't count on things continuing to work well or for long once heated/cooled enough, after damage has occurred.
@honkenstonken I think desoldering and reworking boards really needs it own video. But then everyone wants to know how to re-ball BGA's etc :->
I love you Man! Your enthousiasm is contagious and inspiring. You've taught me so much already these past weeks, watching several of your tutorials a day. You're my favourite teacher at the moment, can't get enough of your stuff :-D
Great stuff as usual Dave. On the D packs I prefer to apply solder to the ground plane and reflow the component onto the board and then do the legs.
Regards
Trevor
-10 years later: Thanks for this!
No disrespect, all your videos are great and very informative, at the same time we should share good tips, and ideas when we can. I usually use a small piece of masking tape to hold the part in place and apply a tiny amount of solder, I find it suits me much better and no need for both hands, no need for tweezers, and shaky hands can dislodge the parts whilst soldering and you end up with parts not being straight and center, which looks a bad job .
One thing is I do not recommend applying any solder to the pads, a component should sit straight and flat if there is no solder on the pad, so you get a small piece of masking tape and stick it half way over the SMT part, covering only half of it, so that you keep the side to be soldered first exposed, place it over the pad and press down the masking tape to the board, this will now hold the part in place and not allow it to move as you bring your solder and hot iron tip to the joint. As the solder melts, with the help of flux it will just flow nicely covering the pad and the pin, leaving a nice clear shiney joint .
One more thing avoid re-heating a joint without fresh solder as reheating causes solder to cling to the iron tip as the flux has been used up, so without fresh flux the solder will wick out, and leave a poor quality joint, also with the masking tape there is less risk of a part moving as the solder starts to dry, which could cause a poor unreliable joint. I have had no problems using 0.7mm wide solder. and I have also soldered the tiniest part the same way using masking tape.
+Jayant Desai
I have also found your methods to be more reliable for clean work. The masking tape holds the part down cleanly, and all the effort is in the initial tape-down; once the tape is in place correctly you can work without having to align the tweezers every time. Using tape does require that you do not tin the pads, as the above poster noted. I've also found tinning the pads to be counterproductive, as then you can't lay the part down evenly and cleanly.
Hi Dave thank you for the last 3 Soldering Tutorial's I really thought it would be impossible to solder surface mount components. Thanks for all the tips Dave. Kind regards Steve.
I'm still amazed at the number of thru-hole kits that are advertised as "easy to make, no surface mount parts".
In my experience of teaching people to solder, they will complete a surface version of a board in about half the time with half the mistakes and virtually no dry joints.
I usually use 1206 just to keep it easy for them in a workshop.
I hate thru-hole because of the messy results, legs that move, flipping the board. Urg! I don't know how anyone can design in it anymore.
My method of soldering two lead (resistor, cap) SOT chips. I tin both pads on the board, I then drop the SOT on the pads (mostly centered), use two pencil irons (one in each hand) and reflow. Let surface tension center the SOT. I can get it to work about 90% of the time. Most mistakes is when one of the irons "wicks" the part up when the iron is removed.
So cute watching vids by Baby Dave. Audio has come a long way since these early vids. Keep on keeping on Mr EEVblog
Thank you Dave. I'm glad TH-cam worked out this time with the upload.
I love how Dave materializes in.
@ryantheleach Not a special iron, just one that has those tips available. Some brands do, some don't.
I don't normally shake, I have very steady hands, but trying to think, talk, and watch the camera all at the same time under a very cramped magnifiying glass and stradling video camera/tripod setup while standing up makes it hard to keep stready. It's not my normal soldering position by any stretch!
when you are acctually soldering heatsinks or extra thick lanes cause there is a lot of current flowing through there you could instead of using higher temperatures use two soldering irons at the same 350 degrees celcius temperature. cauce you are using two soldering irons you have twice amount of heat transfer and twice the amount of power your soldering station can deliver to the iron. This method helped me while reparing a board wich has a large heatsink on it that was broken loose.