Lessons: #4 Soldering

Ok. Lets say you wanted to take that LED circuit we "made" a while back in lesson 2 and make it into a permanent circuit. How would you go about doing that? You wouldn't super glue the leads to the wires and you sure wouldn't tape them together. So, how would you do it? 

Source

Here's the answer. It's soldering! (Yay..!) Anyways, it's essentially a metal super glue. Solder is a metal that melts at a relatively low temperature; about 360 degrees fahrenheit to be exact. When you want to connect two components together, you tie their leads together and heat them up to that temperature so the solder will melt and flow around the contact, then hardening to get a more-or-less permanent bond. The process is pretty simple, it takes a little practice, but once you do it a few times, simple soldering is a piece of cake. Let me take you through some of the basic steps. 

1. Plug in your soldering iron and let it set out for about five minutes; giving it time to heat up.

2. Tin your iron. You'll do this by taking a bit of solder and touching it to the tip of your iron. This'll help with the heat transfer. 

3. Twist the leads of your components together, preferably a couple times. This will allow the solder to flow in between the joints, giving you a really solid connection when it hardens.

4. If you're soldering some delicate components together, you'll want to put some heat sink by the components base so the heat from the iron won't burn it out. Heat sink is usually just a small copper clip you clip onto your component that will redirect the heat into the clip instead of allowing it to go directly into your component. 

5. Hold your iron against the soon-to-be connection for a few seconds.

6. With your iron still on the joint, take your solder and touch it to the joint. The solder should flow right into it. 

7. Pull iron away and there ya go! Don't touch it for a bit, it's most likely hotter than no other. 

For the more visual learners, here's a Youtube link for ya.