Minus the blonde hair (and open eyes), that's been me at least once!

I was doing a cap kit on a arcade machine monitor and thought I had discharged everything, seems that wasn't the case the flyback transform on the bottom of the board grazed my arm and it kinda felt like this.

so not only did I do it once, I had to do it again to fully discharge it with my arm.  and after that I decided no more soldering after 3am.

Yes it is difficult to solder but with right soldering iron (higher power) and right tip it is not a very difficult thing to do.

All this happen because I mysteriously lost heating element of both of my soldering iron in that week so this was my quick alternate solution.

At the end I was able to solder it but it took too much time and looks horrible.

The XT60 lipo battery connectors are a real pain to solder. The large gold-plated terminals and copper wire can act as heatsinks, making it difficult to melt the solder. The plastic connector prefers to melt before the gold-plated terminals and wire are at temp for the solder to melt. Your results look much better than my previous attempts.

Your suggestion inspired me to do a blog about my Aoyue 906 - how not to use it...

My recent worst experience is soldering of XT-60 connector with li-po battery. My usual soldering iron suddenly stopped working (heating element issue and waiting for replacement) so as a quick replacement I bought this low cost Chinese XXXX soldering station iron from local market and when I tried to solder the connector its heat was not enough to melt the solder. After spending lots of time on single connector I disassemble the soldering iron to check why its not providing enough heat and found out that heating element is cheap Nichrome one so I decided to break the the outer shell and then decided to directly use the coil as heating source for the soldering of that connector.

Cheap Chinese soldering station iron's Nichrome heating element with K-type thermo-couple (with broken ceramic outer-shell).

Turned on soldering iron

After lots of trouble, I was finally able to solder the XT60 connector with li-po battery but it was looking horrible. But for the time being I was happy that it was soldered with battery and I can test the rest of the hardware.

My worst soldering experience ever.

gordonmx Gee, that sounds a lot like the Boeing 737-MAX

in its current configuration with heaver engines which are mount forward and lower the aircraft's CG has been thrown out. They are going to have to move the wing or the engines. The software will never fix it. And I will never fly on one!

The worst tool anyone can use in a project is not a piece of hardware but poor judgement and common sense. Often this is exhibited in trying to rush a process.  Many engineers, managers, technicians and just about anybody else will tell you more time is wasted undoing the work of a rushed job than doing it right the first time. But I’m assuming you are looking for “hard” tool examples, so my experience comes from using metal tools or objects around high energy circuits or components.  Many years ago I was testing some high capacity batteries for a portable computing device.  One of the mechanical engineers wandered over to check on something.  I had configured the test samples with metal contacts for easy insertion into my fixture.  The distance between the contacts was less than 1/2”.  As the engineer reached for a fully charged battery her wedding band bridged the contacts and the two welded together.  Quick thinking minimized the damage, but she still has a nasty scar today.  I’ve also seen the sad results of a dropped metal tool (i.e. screwdriver, wrench, etc.) on to a “live circuit.  Safety first.

Regards, Gordon Margulieux

My cousin used to dip his soldering iron into solder paste to solder through hole components

phoenixcomm And blade tip rub on engine casings after dynamic manoeuvrings? Still used for all those checks to this very day . . . . . .