Originally published at: Learning how to solder electronic components | Boing Boing
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I had a fascinating experience putting on a transmitter assembly workshop with Free Radio Berkeley 20 years ago. The women were generally really good at soldering with zero experience. The men, it was a mess.
What does it mean?
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I fear this is a dying art, especially when it comes to repairs of consumer electronics. Most modern electronics have teeny tiny surface-mount circuitry that even the most skilled and steady-handed folks have difficulty soldering.
Last time I was in a Frys electronics store they didn’t even sell soldering equipment anymore. (But I guess they went out of business shortly after that.)
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For some reason that’s the go-to stock photo for inappropriate soldering technique but since I’ve often seen it cited by folks trying to push some kind of sexist agenda (not your intent, I’m sure) I’ll just point out that there are plenty of guy stock photo fails as well.
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It’s alive and well in makerspaces at least. Fry’s is probably just reacting to the fact that a lot of people are shopping online.
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Oh god, this. I’ve been making small synths and synth modules for years but there’s no way I could manage SMT parts. Yeah my eyesight is fading but I don’t think I could have ever managed SMT.
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Our house can add a data point to that. My wife showed the kids how to solder, because there’s no point learning how to solder like me.
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Definitely not my intent and that’s part of the reason I specifically used the picture that didn’t really show much more than the model’s hands.
Here’s a little more background:
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SMD isn’t as impossible as it seems - there’s a different (additional) skillset involved, but with decent tweezers and optics (jewelers have been doing this sort of thing for ages) and a bit of practice it doesn’t take much any dexterity than writing script by-hand (perhaps also a dying art!).
Lots of good tutorials on surface mount techniques on YT - Louis Rossman has some incredibly comprehensive and well regarded fix-your-Macbook at-the-component-level vids.
The OP video is a great intro - only thing that seems missing is the importance of fume removal. Turns out the stuff you need to watch out for in that solder smoke isn’t the lead (not very bio-availible in its metalic form) - it’s the rosin/flux (which is often derived form pine-sap) and over-exposure over extended time-frames causes an immunological sensitization reaction - a now-known occupational hazard in the industry.
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SMD is fiddly but once you get the knack the components practically solder themselves. and more to the point I’d desolder and replace an SMD IC over a TH one any day.
tho yeah some are really just too small. I have a eurorack module kit which said ‘not suitable for hand-soldering’, I took this more as a challenge than a fact but gave up after like the 5th component, having accidentally pinged it across the room and lost it a few times. 
should give it another go soon
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yeah the lead doesn’t actually get hot enough to vaporise as far as I know
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I don’t want to play into this idea that one gender is naturally better at soldering than another (it sounds like anecdotal evidence at best), but at the same time I’m pretty sloppy with a soldering iron.
In full disclosure 99% of my soldering is electric guitar components, wires and pots and switches, not circuit boards – when I have soldered circuit boards I have been a lot neater and organized. It’s all right there, clear as day, no problems. But with a guitar parts I end up with a rats nest of too much wiring, and sloppy globs of solder on the backs of potentiometers. (I also have gone back and re-soldered 5-way switches multiple times for different funky pickup combinations, and the more you solder a part the messier it gets.)
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Me, imaging myself doing SMD soldering by hand:
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I have a nice set of speakers in the garage that double as my outdoor movie speakers so they get moved occasionally. I thought it would be easier to disconnect and reconnect into those spring connection thingies.
Tin the wire I thought. I solder like I woodwork.
Start with 12 inches of wire in the hopes of getting a 6 inch pigtail.
Evening out table legs ends up the same way.
Thankfully it’s not how my wife cuts my hair or I’d be bald.
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I’ve assembled SMT parts using a fine tip on my soldering iron, but it’s not easy and very prone to error. That said, doing SMT isn’t that hard if you get a hot-air soldering tool and some solder paste. Oh and a damn good magnifier. Some of those parts are positively microscopic!
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