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goal for 2023: use a conical solder tip and enjoy it

Jan Cumps

You have to challenge your habits. I have always soldered with chisel and sloped/bevel round tips.
Many irons come with a conical tip. A lot of people solder happily with it.

image

I have several, to use with an iron that I like. But I don't like soldering with the conical tips. I am not good at it.
That's going to change this year. I'm going to try and always use these tips when appropriate, and learn to love them.
The real goal is to become better at soldering with the conical versions than I am now with chisel and sloped types. And to enjoy the adaption path.

I'll keep you posted.

  • in reply to hlipka

    I just watched the video. I'm surprised, personally I wouldn't say that my normal soldering practice is all that different, for working at a good speed. I don't think I deviate too much. I don't pre-tin, presumably it is easy for them because they have the solder bath. (I pre-tin stripped wire though, out of habit, regardless if it is solid core or stranded). I eyeball the length of the component leads instead of using that neat trick with the looped component wire, but I trim first just like they do. I form the component leads with pliers, instead of the red tool he used in the video. I certainly don't exceed 30 degrees on PCBs either, because I like the wires mostly straight, instead of combed down (I use blu-tack/putty to temporarily hold the component). (On perfboard when prototyping I will bend and use the component leads as if they were PCB tracks, but that's different). And always clean the board of flux, with this brush (it's very stiff, which works great on PCBs).

  • in reply to shabaz

    In the good old days of mass production with through hole components we had a machine which cut the component leads after flow soldering.

    It would not have been feasible to machine cut before.

    It was properly set up and didn't cut very close to the board, cutting the excess lead and not the actual soldered joint.

    This was for automotive work (and the boards did get coated, although I don't recall that cut lead ends were ever discussed as a reason for coating.)

    MK

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    I was thinking overnight, why these industries are doing these steps that might even conflict or are not observed universally in other industries, and came up with lots of speculation. I wondered if it's due to them storing parts for longer, since they may want to use parts from the same batch for all their products, and maybe their statistics suggests that they reduce failure by a fraction of a percent due to (say) some contaminant not being entirely cleaned off during their preparation and tinning phases. Yet another thought was maybe we are reading or watching some anachronistic stuff and later statistics or more recent material compositions mean some information is redundant.

    Another idea was that maybe they are concerned with metals mixing or rubbing off into the cut copper/plating/solder junction (or maybe residue from unclean wire cutters) and air then causing a reaction between them. My only source is FBI Files/Medical Detectives, where some poor guy was sunk with an anchor, and they identified the zinc plating from it, because the metal itself had rubbed off onto his belt!