Well....

[Harley]

I received my first order of parts from mouser for my SSC PCB's

I must say as someone who has never soldered, i hope this thing works, pics after i finish

What Temp do you use on your stations?

it looks like the green part melts and kinda worries me

[RJ]

Sounds like your Iron is too hot. the Green should not melt.

Try 360 Deg C  for your temp. Should only take 2-3 seconds to make the joint. If you are sitting much longer the joint is either not clean or you have a dirty iron tip, or your iron is not hot enough.

RJ

[RJ]

Try this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

RJ

[CaptainMurdoch]

Can you describe what you mean by melting or attach a pic?  It might be just flux from the solder that you are seeing around the joint.  It will look like a dried up liquid around the joint until you clean it off.


- Chris

[Harley]

Be gentle, it is my first time LOL

[Harley]

What kind of cleaner do yall use after soldering

[CaptainMurdoch]

Well, I'm a pretty new to most of this as well, so I won't criticize your soldering.   Until I built my first USB dongle last week, I hadn't soldered any kits together in over 20 years.  My last kit was a simple adjustable power supply in high school.  As far as I can recall, I had never used flux cleaner until last week.  If you want to see bad, you should see the welds on the wireframe snowman I assembled a couple weeks ago.  On second thought, I may have to blur those parts of the pictures out if I upload them somewhere for people to look at. 

From your picture it looks to me like a lot of flux from using a bit too much solder, but I'll let the soldering experts correct me if I'm wrong.

I picked up some MG Chemicals spray-on flux cleaner to clean my boards up, but there are other options.  I think if you search for flux cleaner on here or on your favorite search engine and you'll find a bit of input and how-to's.

[SteveMaris]

Looks like flux to me as well. What size solder are you using? .032 is best.

[bisquit476]

Not bad, looks pretty good. Should work fine, there's no globs of solder.

[t.jo13]

I picked up some MG Chemicals spray-on flux cleaner to clean my boards up, but there are other options

a cheap option is rubbing alcohol

[CaptainMurdoch]

I picked up some MG Chemicals spray-on flux cleaner to clean my boards up, but there are other options

a cheap option is rubbing alcohol

Thanks.  I've got a couple pages and videos bookmarked that talk about this, but I figured I'd take the commercial route on my first batch of boards and see how far one can will get me.

[zwiller]

Doing nothing is even cheaper.     I only clean unless I de-solder a part or made some other mess.  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login  No issues for me. 

You can really get technical with this stuff, like clipping leads prior to soldering to prevent rust, cleaning flux, anti static mats...  I've done extremely well not over-thinking it.  I'd make sure I had some solder braid before cleaner. 

[Nonamefril]

I gotta say your solder looks better than mine does...I hadn't attempted a board yet all Ive been soldering is wires.But after I was pointed to that Curious Inventor site....My soldering improved by leaps and bounds in a few days.Seeing someone else that's new to soldering a board gives me some better confidence in possibly trying one.Keep up the good work and motivate some of us that hadn't jumped into soldering boards.

[JonB256]

The Kester solder I use is "no clean" listed. The flux that is left hardens quickly and can flake off with a fingernail. I don't bother cleaning since it won't hold dust.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2

[Harley]

what tip does everyone use?

Pointed or Flat tip