noobish modding question...please help

nasty_fat_nasty · Post by **nasty_fat_nasty** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:52 pm

i am new relatively new to the modding scene, but am very interested. I was wondering if anybody could give a walkthrough of the soldering process, just want a clearer tut. before i go in solo and possibly ruin my DC. Thanks

-N

Smiley · Post by **Smiley** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:54 pm

http://www.gamesx.com has a very well written guide/tutorial. helped me, and I'm a moron....

Pablo · Post by **Pablo** » Mon Oct 31, 2005 11:17 pm

Practice soldering beforehand on something not so important. Soldering is an easy skill to master; just remember to tin all your parts before soldering, keep your iron clean afterwards; use a soldering iron and not a gun for this type of work; and obviously, don't run a hot iron across your leg while wearing slacksl it hurts.

nasty_fat_nasty · Post by **nasty_fat_nasty** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 12:02 am

Thanks Guys...i understood some of the words in pablos post, so ill work from there.lol. what do you mean tin the parts?

FETUS · Post by **FETUS** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 12:48 am

Growing a third hand would help a lot. Some of the dumber stuff you forget to tell people after you've done it for a while are like, before soldering glob some solder onto the tip of the HOT iron and flick it off your tip should be shiny. Never put the iron on the board. Put the wire through whatever your putin it through touch the iron to the end of the wire and put the solder to the wire, that'll give you a good quick melt and it will circle around the wire giving you a good clean connection. To remove old solder you'll want a tool called a solder sucker it's a little bulb thing and easy to figure out how to use, now don't use the combination ones we've all been tempted by them before and you almost always end up with a burn on your board next to a glob of solder that's still there, just use the bulb with the iron you have. keep in mind what direction things are flowing, even with the perfect connection an led mounted backwords won't work. That's all I can think of to get you started, just post again if you need more or deeper explanation of something. Either me or someone else will help as long as it's not becoming repetitive. Don't worr about sounding stupid we've all had to ask just about everything you will to get where we are, and for the most part we're a really friendly group. Just avoid null untill you think you are ready.

semicolo · Post by **semicolo** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 11:01 am

I would recommend a 35 or 25W soldering iron.

The tutorial on gamesx.com is quite good, the important thing when you solder two things together is to heat both parts, if you don't, solder will stuck to only the pcb or only the pin (then just heat again to make the solder flow), the solder should met on the parts you're soldering, not the soldering tip (if it doesn't, heat more)

Some components don't like it hot (diodes, chips), you can heat wires and vias a lot.
It's often hard to heat ground spots if the pcb has ground planes (because you need to heat the whole plane).

And, again, keep your tip clean (tin it often, everytime it stops shining and ideally wipe it on a sponge).