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What kind of soldering iron should i use for board work so im careful not to overheat the board? I use a cheap 30 watt corded right now didnt know if thats to high of wattage or not
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Weller makes a line of soldering irons with a temperature control tip. That would be the one to get. The wattage depends on the kind of work being done, but 30W is too much for most electronic stuff. I have a 15W Weller with a temp control tip and I am very happy with it. Also, make SURE the iron you get has a GROUNDED tip. this will help prevent ESD (Electro-Static Discharge) damage to whatever you are touching with the tip. You can get pretty fancy with soldering irons or you can go pretty basic, but you need to know what you are looking for. This is a good place to do some research. Basically, you can get a lot of good work done with a simple iron that costs under $40 and meets the requirements for electronic work. I would stick with a known good brand like Weller and avoid cheap junky irons. Price difference is not significant enough since a good quality iron will last a long time and is not a throw-away tool. A way to recognize Weller thermal regulation on simple (non-station) irons is it has a special tip with a thermo-couple in it. The thermocouple will break the electric circuit when it gets hot enough and will reconnect it when it cools off. This maintains a fairly constant temperature at the tip. If the tip looks like a simple piece of metal then it's not thermo-regulated.
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+ I started out with a cheap 15w soldering iron and it really was a waste of money and no good for this sort of work. You will also need to get a very fine tip 1/32 or something like for this kind of tiny work. And a good light source and a magnifying glass!
Agreed that this is the wrong place to save money. Buy a quality iron and avoid regrets. +
+ Get yourself the magnifying light as well as one of those device that can hold the boards for you while you solder it. I also invested $40 bucks for a USB digital video camera microscope. This way I get a good look at the solder etc...
+ very nice answer
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Also make sure your tip isnt too big. The bigger the tip, the more heat it will radiate and this can damage components. The tip size I use for most of my work is .010"
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is that a metric?
standard actually, works out to be like .25mm
it is super fine.
hi & what type of solder are you using for this?
Is the soldering station here on I fixit for like $50 sufficient for this type of work?
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