[Good Times]

How about a 'show us your tips' thread, rather than all over the place? So not a 'tutorial' thing, but little tricks you've learnt along the way, eg how to season a new soldering iron tip, or get that heatshrink over a tight wire?

My recent discovery is how handy a female 3.5mm jack can be for when soldering a male 3.5mm plug. It saves you scratching up the tip if your alligator clips aren't taped, and makes for easy rotation.

 

[johnwmclean]

Excellent Idea, Good Times!

How do you season a new soldering iron tip, or get that heatshrink over a tight wire?

Like to know these two

 

[Good Times]

Seasoning a soldering iron tip - unsure if it's the best way but I find they usually don't accept solder initially (it balls up). So I heat it up, immerse in solid rosin (I source from a musical instrument store - they use this for violin bows). Then wipe on the wet sponge. Then melt solder on the tip, sponge, flux, sponge etc until it takes the solder nicely.

This usally takes my 10mins. I'd love to hear if anyone has a better method.

 

[SiBurning]

There's a flux/tin compound that comes in a tiny can that removes oxidation. Some of them have corrosives to help cleaning, but they're not that corrosive because people always worry about getting corrosive residue on their boards.

I got mine from Hakko, but I've seen this stuff elsewhere for about $6us.

Can't say how much better the compound is than plain rosin, since I haven't tried plain rosin, and always use the cleaner with the motorized brush contraption. This combination works pretty well. FT-700 Tip Polisher

 

[qusp]

theres an easier way, buy one of the brass wool 'sponges' for tip cleaning. best $12 I ever spent. I never need to do anything else to prepare a tip anymore. just a couple of stabs into the wool and i'm ready to go. so as long as you repeat that after every couple of joints (actually I do it almost every time unless i'm doing some in quick succession. then you should never be in a position that you have to worry

and for getting the tight shrink over the plug if youve forgotten to add to the cable or to make it fit over a largher cable than its designed for and the next size you have is too big. I use either scissors or my needle nose pliers, depending on how long the piece of shrink is. so I put the shrink over the scissors and pull the handles out, then turn the shrink a quarter turn and go again, each time moving the shrink a bit further up the scissors so youve got more leverage; then when you've got it about as far as you can go before you think its gonna split, you take it off and turn it around the other way and repeat so its fairly evenly stretched otherwise you have a piece thats wide at one end and pretty much normal the other. obviously this wont work on really long pieces, but its great for pieces for strain relief so you can get that nice and tight/neat look.

also for using silver wire with clear teflon, I always solder the wire with the teflon still off or at the very least pulled up the wire so its not close to the joint. this is good to avoid flux from being sucked up the clear teflon by capillary action and discolouring the wire. so just clean with a little alcohol and slide the teflon up to the joint.

another trick is often if you have to drill out connector bodies to get them over the cable, finish it off with a dremmel sanding bit and/or sand paper to avoid damaging the wire coating or; heaven forbid the techflex thats glued in place on a cable thats nearly finished when you thread it on before doing the other end. and if by chance you damage the teflon/PVC on a casing slightly with a sharp edge. use a lighter or I use a hot air tool, this does a good job of healing small scratches. moreso with the PVC types like jena or vampire, or any coating that is similar. teflon is pretty resistant to heat, so in order to fix that; dont do it in the first place by following the tips above LOL

 

[kuroguy]

I use a pair of mini needle nose pliers for stretching all but the smallest heat shrink. Insert both tips of the pliers into the tubing and pull the handles open to stretch the tubing. I work the tubing from both ends on the pliers and turn the tubing as I stretch it. You don't get too much time before the tubing returns to its original size, but it is usually enough time to get the tubing in place before heating it.

I season an iron tip with a damp sponge and some rosin flux solder. apply solder to the tip while wiping the tip on the sponge. don't be afraid to wipe hard. Tip tinned in a few seconds. If all else fails, use a flat file to clean up the tip and then tin it.

 

[Gvvt]

Great stuff so far. Thanks. As an extreme noob, I really appreciate any and all shared experience.

 

[BradJudy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Good Times /img/forum/go_quote.gif My recent discovery is how handy a female 3.5mm jack can be for when soldering a male 3.5mm plug. It saves you scratching up the tip if your alligator clips aren't taped, and makes for easy rotation.

I do a similar thing with RCA plugs/jacks. I have a panel with four cheapo RCA jacks in it that I can use as either a mount for soldering connectors or as temp jacks for testing something mid-build.

 

[apatN]

I used a male 3.5mm to identify the different pins on a female 3.5mm. Worked like a charm.

 

[DKJones96]

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnwmclean /img/forum/go_quote.gif How do you season a new soldering iron tip

I always had trouble with that until I bought the little $6 can of soldering iron tinning/cleaning stuff from radio shack. It smells horrible when you dip the tip into it but it's an instant tin on a new tip. I don't know why I was so reluctant to buy it but now I regret not getting it sooner.

 

[scootermafia]

That is a hella smart idea. I should set something up with a female jack.

 

[danobeavis]

I spent years building stuff without these two things:

Now I can't imagine getting by without them.

 

[Good Times]

Beavis, would that tapered reamer be sharp enough for opening up barrels on eg 3.5mm plugs? I'm struggling to do that without scuffing the barrel on my Neutriks.

 

[danobeavis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Good Times /img/forum/go_quote.gif Beavis, would that tapered reamer be sharp enough for opening up barrels on eg 3.5mm plugs? I'm struggling to do that without scuffing the barrel on my Neutriks.

If you can find one that has a small enough tip.

It really depends on what you are drilling to.

For hammond-type aluminum enclosures they are great. Most of the stuff I do is guitar stompbox stuff. So you go at with very little finesse and make holes bigger easily.

I haven't done precision-level work with a reamer.

 

[bhjazz]

This is nice, but I'll throw in my usual blurb: Use the Search function. There are many, many threads like this already here!