shrimants
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2006
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Hello all!
I started biulding Y1 and Y2 day before yesterday and all is not going so well.
The Y1 was easy enough to finish the SMD components. I got all the SMD's and logic gates soldered on without problems. I dont really know how to test for good connections just yet, i'm still reading on that but I have a little analog volt/ohm/amp meter that I can use.
The Y2 has not gone well at all. Apparently if you buy a 15 dollar soldering iron, you get 15 dollars worth of quality from it. my cone tip got completely mishapen, wether it was from the soft plasticy brillo pad I used to clean it or what I dont know, but it basically gave me so many bridges on that TI chip. Eventually it snagged one of the pins and broke it. As I tried to desolder the TI chip using the fresh chisel tip, it broke one of the traces off of the board so that was more or less an unrecoverable error. Total cost of that mistake is looking to be about 40 bucks. 15 for a new Y2 board and 15 for a new TI chip, plus shipping.
I dont feel comfortable using this soldering iron anymore as the only even marginally useful tip it came with was the conical tip, and that was way too blunt. I'm wondering if I should dump this weller iron altogether or attempt to return it to amazon. It was an SP23LK 25 watt soldering iron. Its not that it got too hot or anything, the temperature was easy enough to deal with. The TI chip and the wolfson just have such little spacing between the leads that there's no way a novice like me can manage to solder it. Ive only soldered battery holder wires to motor casings before, nothing this intricate. I know I screwed up the TI chip because every single lead had 0 resistance between leads per side. ie on the left side of the chip, there was only one lead that had some resistance registering, but aprt from that every lead was showing 0 resistance with other leads on the side it shared, meaning the entire thing was just one giant lead.
Can anyone give me some advice on these problems? All the hard junk is done for now for the Y1, all thats left is through-hole soldering, which wasnt terribly difficult. What soldering iron should I get, knowing i've already blown WAY past my dad's proposed $200 budget? (its cost closer to 330 now, so every extra dollar is another nail in my coffin). ChipQuik is now a necessity, but I definately cant carry on with this soldering iron and weller doesnt even make tips for it, so a different soldering iron model is definately the only way out I see.
Pics will follow soon of my current (halted) progress
I started biulding Y1 and Y2 day before yesterday and all is not going so well.
The Y1 was easy enough to finish the SMD components. I got all the SMD's and logic gates soldered on without problems. I dont really know how to test for good connections just yet, i'm still reading on that but I have a little analog volt/ohm/amp meter that I can use.
The Y2 has not gone well at all. Apparently if you buy a 15 dollar soldering iron, you get 15 dollars worth of quality from it. my cone tip got completely mishapen, wether it was from the soft plasticy brillo pad I used to clean it or what I dont know, but it basically gave me so many bridges on that TI chip. Eventually it snagged one of the pins and broke it. As I tried to desolder the TI chip using the fresh chisel tip, it broke one of the traces off of the board so that was more or less an unrecoverable error. Total cost of that mistake is looking to be about 40 bucks. 15 for a new Y2 board and 15 for a new TI chip, plus shipping.
I dont feel comfortable using this soldering iron anymore as the only even marginally useful tip it came with was the conical tip, and that was way too blunt. I'm wondering if I should dump this weller iron altogether or attempt to return it to amazon. It was an SP23LK 25 watt soldering iron. Its not that it got too hot or anything, the temperature was easy enough to deal with. The TI chip and the wolfson just have such little spacing between the leads that there's no way a novice like me can manage to solder it. Ive only soldered battery holder wires to motor casings before, nothing this intricate. I know I screwed up the TI chip because every single lead had 0 resistance between leads per side. ie on the left side of the chip, there was only one lead that had some resistance registering, but aprt from that every lead was showing 0 resistance with other leads on the side it shared, meaning the entire thing was just one giant lead.
Can anyone give me some advice on these problems? All the hard junk is done for now for the Y1, all thats left is through-hole soldering, which wasnt terribly difficult. What soldering iron should I get, knowing i've already blown WAY past my dad's proposed $200 budget? (its cost closer to 330 now, so every extra dollar is another nail in my coffin). ChipQuik is now a necessity, but I definately cant carry on with this soldering iron and weller doesnt even make tips for it, so a different soldering iron model is definately the only way out I see.
Pics will follow soon of my current (halted) progress