Gertboard - The Element14 strikes back

Hello All!

Count me in on the Gert Board. I've purchased one this morning and I've downloaded the comicbook that has the solder lessons. I'm going to give it a go. Sorry to sound so basic - but I find all of the info, projects, lessons, questions and products a blast.

Best,

Peg

Good luck Peg. Hope you have great fun.

OK im Sold-ered. I always believed I am a terrible wielder of the soldering iron. But I have never really given myself a fair test. A few emergency repairs with big blobs of solder is all I have achieved until now. I have done many Arduino projects but always managed to find a way to connect stuff with non perm. connectors,adapters, couplers whatever just to avoid the dreaded iron.

I would like a Gertboard and even though Steve Read kindly offered his services I have decided to bite the bullet and go Hands Soloder.

I have a good iron and a couple of Maplin bot kits I bought about a year ago (EOL 99p each), I shall tackle those first as a trial. They have a couple of motors a pic socket and a few transistors and resistors etc. If either of them works after my efforts I will order a Gertboard and go for it.

So wish me luck. I type this with 10 unburnt hand digits at this time and these hands were born when WW2 rationing was still on. So I am quite fond of them.

Who knows maybe I'll surprise myself and be a solder Da Vinci. haha. Night all.

Awesome!  If you make a mistake, this thread should be useful: Re: De-solder Braid.  I prefer braid to desoldering pump but never realized before reading the post that adding flux would make it even easier.

Hello Ray, Good luck, I'm sure you will be fine, if I can do it, anyone can.

There are loads of tutorials around the net, have a look at a few of those and there are also loads of soldering tutorials on YouTube. Of course, none of this makes up for actually *doing* it, so you could always buy some stripboard and a few resistors and have a go on those first, this is the way I started and it gave me the confidence to go on from there.

Best advice I can give and you will probably see this loads of times, is make sure the soldering tip is (very) clean, no oxidisation at all and is well tinned (coated with a small amount of solder) - this in my experience makes the difference between a nice, shiny join and bits of solder everywhere apart from where you want them !

Cheers,

Steve

Cheers Steve and Drew I am feeling more confident now for when I "go to it" over the weekend,

Ray

Well Guys,

I've read the comic on soldering and just rounded up a bunch of old boards to take home with me for practice this weekend. "we have ignition". I've actually purchased a few things for my raspi's and they all require a bit of solder - thank you AdaFruit! ) I'm interested in the RasPiComm (http://amesberger.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/raspicomm-a-raspberry-pi-piggy-back-board-12/) and the Pi-Face (http://pi.cs.man.ac.uk/interface.htm)

Best,

Peg

Well I have finished my solder school debute on the Maplin Random Movement bug. It doesnt look pretty but it worked first time. ( when I replaced a duff battery anyway lol)

2 motors, 4 transistors, 4 caps, a pic12f629 with socket,  ceramic resonator, battery holder and switch. So not a huge task I know.  Some of the joints looked "shorted" so I tested all with a meter before putting batteries in. I am quite please with myself. I was sure I was too old a dog to learn this new trick.

Some comments.

I have some real probs with hand shake any good tips? would be VERY welcome. (cushion rest etc)

Boy those chip legs suddenly look VERY close together and tip of iron looks like a Saturn 5 under my BIG magnifyer.

At the end of this excercise I learnt 2 main things. You solder monkeys out there are all Artists and Engineers. Im a back yard mechanic.

But if I can do this anyone can and I am now a little more confident that I could handle a Gertboard if I really took my time.

Thanks for all the advice on the above. Oh and only one burnt finger.

Ray

That's great to hear, Ray! 

Not sure about hand stabilization but hopefully someone else has some ideas.

Ray, Great news :-) One burnt finger is a real result, I have problems remembering to pick up the non heated end most times...

Regarding hand shake, I've no concrete answer on this, would one of those 'sacks' that people use in lieu of a proper Sat Nav holder in cars work ? They are well weighed down and offer a lot of grip on the underside. I kind of lean my hand on the edge of my desk when soldering (mainly because there isn't a lot of space anywhere else) which helps me. Also get one of those 'helping hand' devices from ebay or Amazon, a small magnifying glass but more importantly two little arms with crocodile clips on the end that grip things for you, as I always find it goes something like...

Left hand - soldering iron. Right hand - Solder.....er hold on, how do I pick up the bit I need to solder. An extra set of arms would come in wonderfully handy sometimes.

Steve

Oh, that's a good point about a "helping hand" device.  Similar to that, I love to use my Panavise Jr. to hold the board I'm soldering:

http://www.panavise.com/index.html?pageID=1&page=full&--eqskudatarq=1

They come in bigger sizes for large boards, too.

I just want to congratulate you Ray on taking a very methodical and sensible approach to the problem, preparing yourself before diving in.  That's the basis on which effective engineering rests.  Good days ahead for you.

Well done.

I just want to congratulate you Ray on taking a very methodical and sensible approach to the problem, preparing yourself before diving in.  That's the basis on which effective engineering rests.  Good days ahead for you.

Well done.

Thanks Morgaine. Kind words indeed. But to be honest my good days are mainly behind me. I spent a lifetime working with chemistry and computers and making them react safely with each other. I am retired now and decided that hobby electroncics will be my way to keep brain and body nimbleish. I've had a lot of fun with Arduino over the last couple of years and am loving the Pi. So on to the next project, and the next.....

Ray

Hi Ray.  I have been following this discussion and feel that the following may be of some help to you.

In a late eighties I toured the UK with the DTI mobile automated Electronics Factory demonstrating  surface mount techniques and all the other advanced manufacturing in electronics techniques coming to the forefront at that time.  After this I spent some time at the Highbury college in Portsmouth running the surface mount technology workshop.  At that time IBM had a local factory, and it was trying to cross train all its employees and their idea was that if everyone was flexible, then the factory would become more efficient. The factory made hard disk drives and there was a small surface mount board incorporated in that device. The idea was that they could take a storeman or perhaps a fork truck driver and get them to assemble surface mount boards the same way that the young female operators did.  So, without asking me if I thought it was feasible - IBM was always right -  they commissioned me to run a series of workshops to do the training. This just really did not work because the men not only found it very difficult to hold the tools and components steady, but also to see what was going on without powerful magnifiers.  The young females found it easy and produced high quality work. Needless to say, the experiment was abandoned after a short time.

So, everything you have said in this discussion is validated by my experiences. However, I feel sure that the posts I make over the coming weeks will give you hope and enable you to complete a satisfactory kit build. Must stop now as I have run out of time. For the record, I was born before the WW2 rationing started, but still expect to complete a Gertboard kit build which will work first time.

Very interesting post, cityswift, and inspiring too.

Thanks for that Cityswift and I look forward to your additional posts. Us old dogs still got a few tricks in us eh?

Ray

About making soldering easier- I recently realized that one reason it's easier to solder at work than at home (apart from the nice binocular microscope) is that we have Metcal MX-500P-11 soldering irons. With that unit, the tip is only 4 cm away from the hand grip, making precision work easier.  I could not spend $500 for my own Metcal, so at home I have a cheap Radio Shack iron with a tip about 8 cm away from the grip, so it is 2x as long. That means any deviation in the angle of my hand is multiplied 2x at the tip relative to the Metcal, and that makes a real difference with accuracy.

Is there any affordable iron with a short hand grip - tip distance? Or is that not practical with a simple, conventional iron (the Metcal uses RF heating right at the tip, so there is no separate heating cartridge to design around).

jbeale wrote:

 

we have Metcal MX-500P-11 soldering irons. With that unit, the tip is only 4 cm away from the hand grip, making precision work easier.

That is an excellent observation.

PS. I have a very old Bausch & Lomb 20X binocular microscope fixed to my worktable, and when I set its 0.7-3.0 zoom to the lowest magnification I get 14X and am able to solder tiny features reasonably effectively.  Good hand control is really difficult though, so your point rings a strong bell.  I'll be looking out for shorter soldering irons.  A pic here for background:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/morgaines/6172845302/in/set-72157627604533547

Morgaine.

Thanks jbeale and Morgaine. Excellent tips (pun intended) about shorter irons  Mine is about 3 or inches from holding point to tip, Perhaps a shorter iron would help steady my wobbles or I need some oven gloves.

Ray

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

PS. I have a very old Bausch & Lomb 20X binocular microscope...

If I had a binocular microscope, I'd just use my laser vision!    It doesn't work with a magnifier or monocular microscope or video monitor.

There's a joke about sharks and overlords there somewhere, but it refuses to materialize.

I have looked at the Gertboard assembly manual and the soldering instructions are basically

1. Solder iron in

2. Solder in

3. Solder out

4. Solder iron out.

I think the process deserves more coverage than that, as if you have an understanding of what is happening, then you have much better chance of doing it correctly.

This is what happens when you make a joint using 60/40 tin lead solder wire with a rosin flux core and an iron tip temperature of around 270 degrees C.

1. All surfaces must be bright and shiny to start with.

2. The tip is applied to the surfaces being soldered to bring them up to its temperature.

3, The solder is fed into the joint and it melts a 185 C releasing the now molten flux into the joint. The flux is inert at room temperature but becomes molten at 120 C and mildly acidic so that it dissolves the thin layer of oxide on the surfaces allowing the formation of a pure alloy. This is the process known as wetting, and the flux is the key to its achievement. The solder is then withdrawn.

4. The tip is removed and the temperature drops rapidly and the solder solidifies at 185 C and the flux residue solidifies around 100 C and reverts to its inert state. The components must not be moved during the freezing process so some method of achieving that needs to be implemented.

I am sure that many of you will already know this, but I thought it worth repeating so that you start on a solid foundation.

I have ordered bits to test out some ideas and more will follow.

Dave Tedd