Soldering help...

[NoFO]

Ok, so I' just boutght my first house, and the basement is ALL MINE!!! Of course, i'm gonna wire that bad boy up big time. I have absolutely 0 (as in zero, nil, nada, zilch) experience in soldering.

so here are my ?'s

1) How powerful of an iron do i need? (wattage and such)
1B) What size tips do i need?
2) can i get it at home depot?
3) what kind of soldering material should i use?
4) What kind of cabling should i use, as in which manufacturer, which distributer do you all use, (MIC, TRS, and headphone)
5) how about wall plates?


Anything else i will need to know about this?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!BIG FAT WET SLOPPY THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[skippy]

For electronic soldering around the studio, you need a fairly small iron. 25 watts is just fine, and actually even a little bit large for most patchbay/instrument/cable work. 35 watts might be necessary if you anticipate doing a lot of heavy soldering (like copper tape for shilding guitar pickup cavities, where the copper will sink too much heat away from the joint area with a smaller iron). You'll almost *never* need more than 25 watts: too big an iron will get you into more trouble than you want, as the extra heat will get to places you don't want it to go to.

Tips: long, skinny, slender, conical. You won't need many: I've been using the same long conical tip on my Weller iron for 3 years. With care and cleaning, they're pretty long-lived. The tip will slowly erode, as any copper in it goes into solution in the solder- but that's thousands of joints down the road... Keep a poist sponge at hand for cleaning the tip prior to each joint.

Home Depot? Doubt it, but it is possible. Most of their soldering gear is intended for plumbers: million-watt guns and nasty, disgusting acid-core solder, either of which will disintegrate a printed ciruit board at first glance. Not applicable to our needs. But look anyway- I don't know what they have. Worse comes to worst, order online. Home Depot won't have decent solder anyway. Rat Shack probably won't either.

Solder: Kester 44, 60/40 rosin-core solder for general purpose use. Or, if you really want to do it right, Kester 62: 62/36/2 silver solder. That is twice as expensive, but is *righteous* stuff for audio work. Thanks for reminding me- I'm almost out, and need to order another pound. Whichever type of solder you get, the 0.025" dia stuff is easiest to work with.

Cabling: yes, cable is good. There are a million options: Belden, Canare, Mogami, Gepco... You'll need to get catalogs from http://www.markertek.com , http://www.fullcompass.com , http://www.mouser.com . Those folks have wire, connectors (I like Neutrik), solder, and irons...

Wallplates: Markertek, or build your own.

Practice your soldering/desoldering technique on junk gear or scraps of 24AWG wire before attacking anything you want to keep. Just remember: you apply the heat to the parts you want to solder, and then let the solder melt onto the hot parts. Heating the solder and dripping it onto cold wire will give you a cold joint and a mountain of headaches. The wire has to be hot enough for the solder to melt on it, wick onto its surface, and get a good bond. Practice!

 

[laptoppop]

First recommendation: Think Radio Shack, not Home Depot. There are several different kinds of soldering, and you want the electronic kind, not the stained glass window kind or the radiator kind or the copper plumbing kind. :>) Both the soldering tools and the solder to be used are different for different jobs. The clerk at Radio Shack can help you get the right stuff.

The size of the soldering iron will determine the tip(s) to be used. The smaller irons with different tips are typically used more for soldering onto printed circuit boards using different types of devices.

For connector soldering, you want an iron that is easy to handle, and that is nice and hot. You will also want to plan on using something else (vise or mounted plate, etc.) to hold the connector while soldering.

Taking an iron that is nice and hot with a tip that has been tinned with solder (melt solder on the tip and wipe it off on a wet sponge so that it looks nice and shiny), heat up the connector and wire. Once they are hot, touch some solder to the wire and let it flow over the whole joint. You are looking for nice coverage, not a big sloppy ball of mess. Remove the iron from the connector while still supporting wire in place. When it cools, the connection should be nice and shiny.

Good luck!
-lee-

 

[Track Rat]

Another note (a little music humor there), if the finished solder joint has a frosty look instead of nice and shiny, it's probably a cold solder joint and you should re-do it.

 

[NoFO]

this is great advice thanks!!!... keep it coming!!!

THANKS!!!

 

[ola]

The solder should melt on the material you're soldering, not the tip of the soldering iron.

Don't blow on a solder joint to make it cool faster. You'll only end up with a cold solder joint.

Practice your skills a on cheap whatever cable before you start on the expensive stuff.

 

[frederic]

Ok, so I' just boutght my first house, and the basement is ALL MINE!!! Of course, i'm gonna wire that bad boy up big time. I have absolutely 0 (as in zero, nil, nada, zilch) experience in soldering.

Congratulations!

1) How powerful of an iron do i need? (wattage and such)
1B) What size tips do i need?

If you only have one or two patch bays to solder up, a radio shack 25W iron for 8 dollars would do the trick. They have one that's switchable between 25W and 40W which if you flick the switch, allows you to solder larger connections easier, as well as do the detail work necessary at a lower wattage for patch bays/audio cabling.

2) can i get it at home depot?

Radio Shack

3) what kind of soldering material should i use?

Silver solder is best, in leu of that you should use rosin core electronic solder. Thinner solder is easier to use in tight patch bays, and takes less heat.

4) What kind of cabling should i use, as in which manufacturer, which distributer do you all use, (MIC, TRS, and headphone)

Gepco, mogomi, canare, etc.

5) how about wall plates?

You can buy pre-made plates from many companies. If you have a drill press (or a hand drill and a steady hand!) its less expensive to buy plate blanks from Home Depot, and drill jack holes the way you want. I chose this route because I wanted custom plates that have a few XLR mic jacks, as well as TRS 1/4" jacks, so this was the easiest solution.

Goood luck!

 

[NoFO]

thanks, and another tip...

thanks for all the tips, i feel much more confident now... also, a workmate of mine also gave me a tip, when you are connecting a XLR cable, some of them have a half-pipe design, and you put the wire in there and melt the solder on top.... he recomended filling the half pipe first, letting it cool and then reheating it and inserting the wire around it. he claims it lets all the cleaning filler in the solder boil off and it creates a better connection. i'll try this out and let you know how it works....

also, i spoke with a gentleman at a well known reseller and he recomended 24 AWG Belden wire for the permanent installation wire, and it's $65 for 500 feet. good deal? right wire? sounded rather thin to me, but he said it does'nt matter for permanent fixtures. thoughts?

thanks alot guys and gals

chris

 

[skippy]

Actually, for just about any connector or use, you'll want to tin the wire first, as well as tinning the solder pocket on the XLR or the lug on the 1/4" or patch jack. That's just about the only way to make stranded wire manageable, so that you don't get loose strands floating around that could cause shorts down the road. And having a clean, fresh coating of solder on both surfaces helps dramatically in getting a good bond, and avoid cold joints.

You'd strip the wire, heat it, and melt just enough solder into the strands to make it essentially solid wire over the last 1/8"-1/4". The, you'd heat up and melt a bit of solder onto the connector to completely cleans and tin it. You'd then heat up the solder on the connector, slip the tinned wire into it when it melts, and keep the heat on for just another second or so so that the solder already on the wire, and the solder already on the connector, melt and intermingle. Add enough extra solder to properly fill the solder pocket, You'd then remove the heat, and hold the wire in place as the solder cools and solidifies.

Each time you pick up the iron, wipe the tip on your damp sponge to remove any oxidixed solder and flux residue on the tip- just make it a habit. Some people don't agree with this, but it's been my religion for the last 30 years or so...

24AWG is fine for permanent install cable.

Here are a couple more soldering resources that look useful:
http://www.epemag.com/solderfaq/default.htm
http://et.nmsu.edu/~etti/fall97/electronics/solder.html
http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/echeeve1/Ref/Solder/Soldering.html

Google is an amazing thing- those are just the first 3 hits from a search on the phrase "soldering technique"...