[TacticalCoder]

> It's relaxing and has a skill curve such that there's a trick to it but with a bit of practice, you can be someone who is really good at soldering, too.

I don't know. I've got my station, not a bad one: bought it with the help of a buddy who's very good at soldering. He tried to show me. I've got no choice: I own an old vintage arcade cab from the mid 80s and it's located in the middle of nowhere, in a rural area. So I have to fix it myself.

And oh boy do I suck at it. I watched vids, countless Youtube vids. It's been 10 years and everytime I need to solder something, I still suck at it.

I've come to terms with the fact that there are some things I'm good at and that soldering is never ever going to be one of these. And it's okay.

And I'm amazed by people who can solder properly.

[bityard]

I'm not trying to convince you of anything, but if all of your soldering experience is from parts that came out of a 40 year-old arcade cabinet, don't beat yourself up: that is definitely what I would call soldering in hard mode. Depending on where it lived, everything in it is probably oxidized, corroded and covered in dust, cigarette tar, and possibly cooking oil. Even if you can't see/smell any of it, it's still there. Solder only works well on pristine, clean metals. Some metals are just simply marginal, and don't take solder well even if they were ostensibly designed for it. Flux helps, but can only do so much. The semi-good news is that you should stand a chance if you can clean the bejeezus out of whatever it is your soldering a LOT of alcohol and a stiff brush, and maybe some fine-grit sandpaper.

[opan]

Will second this. When modding Xbox 360s, I used MrMario's guides and he would say repeatedly "clean, flux, tin", kinda stuck in my head. I did also tend to just clean the whole board while it was apart, but especially the point you're about to solder should be clean.

I have never used sandpaper on electronics, but I perhaps similarly use a fiberglass pen. Total game changer for getting old cartridge pins to read again for SNES and GBA games and such. Highly recommend picking one up.

[TacticalCoder]

Ah thanks to all of you for the nice comments. I didn't really realize this: I may not despair yet and still give it some more tries. I'll probably keep a few tiny PCBs (say from broken computer mouses) around and cut cables (so that they're not oxidized) and give it a go again and see if I can get a bit better at it.

[projektfu]

They make practice projects with lots of joints for a few bucks that you can use to develop technique. Then you can know it's not just technique.

[Doxin]

A glass fiber pen is my go-to for cleaning groddy pads and pins and the like. Works a treat.

[peteforde]

I don't want to flog a dead horse, but can you confirm whether or not you have a stereo microscope or not?

I cannot stress enough that this is not a trivial detail. I spent my whole life thinking that I was simply terrible at soldering. Then I got a proper stereo microscope and now I feel like a freaking ninja.

Seriously, you do not know if you're bad at soldering until you've spent an hour with a proper STEREO microscope. All of the folks saying "just get a 10x magnifier loupe for $5" are completely missing the point.

If you give your brain a stereo view, you will suddenly be like Neo in the Matrix. Thank me later.

[ssl-3]

I also get to fix gear in the middle of nowhere, so I'm sympathetic to that plight.

I used to watch people with fancy-looking soldering irons working quickly on stuff in repair shops. Some of that was technique ("it is a poor craftsman who blames his tools"), but some of it was definitely the irons they were using.

And yet: My first soldering experiences were not very good.

The first soldering irons I had, starting 30 years ago or so, were resolutely terrible. I eventually gained a whole assortment of them -- big, medium, small, and ginormous. They were all awful in their own unique ways, and they all lacked a thermostatic temperature control.

I got better solder (I've become a big fan of Kester 44 in a eutectic 63/37 mix) fairly early on, which helped a ton.

Later, I got better soldering irons.

A dozen years ago I bought a Hakko clone temperature-controlled soldering station from an American distributor. It took genuine Hakko tips just fine, and it was better.

5 or 6 years ago, I got a Pinecil v1. I now own two of them: I bought one as a spare in case one broke somehow (it's hard to fix a soldering iron without a soldering iron), but they've both been reliable. It's miles ahead of what I've used before. The v2 should be a bit better yet, but I do not own one of those. They're rather inexpensive.

These Pinecil irons weren't available a decade ago. I wish they had been.

---

Anyway: With the tools decently in-check, my technique got a lot better in a big hurry. I thought I'd learned to be pretty OK at soldering before with my lackluster tools, but the Pinecil iron (and its consistent temperature, sleep modes, and very quick heat-up) helps me get much better results -- faster.

And it's hackable, which (to me) scores some geek points.

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I've come to think that anybody can learn to solder electronics with reasonable proficiency. I've taught people to solder who were sure they couldn't do it, including people who started off by being surprised by how hot the hot-bits are and walking them back from the ledge.

As with many other skills, it mostly just takes practice. But that practice should be inconsequential -- it's a lot easier to learn when the result is completely unimportant and inconsequential than on a dear 40-year-old arcade board.

To that end: There's ridiculously-inexpensive kits these days that primarily exist just to teach soldering. I learned through-hole the old-fashioned way (by failing), but back then cheap kits didn't exist at the level they do today. :)

If you can tell me more about the specific problems you're having with soldering, I can provide links to specific, specific soldering kits that may help.

(I can provide hands-on help, too, if you're not too far away. No big deal.)

[TacticalCoder]

> (I can provide hands-on help, too, if you're not too far away. No big deal.)

Arcade cab would be located in France, on the french riviera, 45 minutes from the closest highway, in a sea-side but rural (lots of vineyards) area.

But I want to thank you very much for the explanation and offer to help!

Nothing in particular: typically it's the wiring around the joysticks and buttons that gives me the most trouble for the wire harness kinda "weighs" on it, then kid play like maniacs, and eventually a solder fails and has to be redone.

Now on the plus side I did buy a chinese JAMMA harness and did manage to solder everything but the result is fuglier than fugly: that's why I say I'm really bad at it. Basically I can do "gross" soldering, but not nice looking, precise ones.

I'll practice a bit though after the kind words from everybody.

[ssl-3]

Yeah, France is a little bit out for me. There's quite a big pond between here and there. :)

So... joysticks, and buttons. Don't those have microswitches? With connectors on each switch?

Crimping the correct mating terminals can be more reliable than soldering. (Crimp-on connectors are what keeps airplanes up in the sky.)

Perhaps the right answer to soldering arcade controls is to stop soldering altogether. :)

Solder does have a big advantage, though, in that it is very universal. Any random copper wire can be glued onto any random terminal with molten metal, and that's pretty neat because it doesn't take any specialized parts or tools to make this work.

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Anyway, I promised to help. For that kind of soldering, my usual workflow goes like something like this:

1. Cut off the end of the wire (for nice clean copper) and strip back the insulation a bit.

2. Heat up the iron and prep it (apply solder, wipe it off along with oxides, maybe apply more solder; it should be shiny and wet, but not with globs of stuff on it)

3. Tin the exposed copper wire. Heat it up while applying solder, until the solder flows through the strands freely. Too hot/too long means that a bunch of solder flows down past the insulation, which isn't ideal. Too cold/not long enough means that it kind of globs instead of flows. Perfect is somewhere in the middle. Set it aside to cool down.

4. Tin the terminal. Just heat it up with solder applied, until there's a neat little easily-flowing pool of it, and then let it cool down some. If the solder's flux core starts to burn, you're taking too long. If it blobs, it's not hot enough or not clean enough. Somewhere in the middle is, again, perfect.

5. Stick them together. Place the tinned wire on the tinned terminal so they "want" to rest together naturally (there's jigs that help with this kind of fixturing). And then, heat up the combination of the two with the iron. The solder that's mixed up with the wire will become one with the pool of solder on the terminal, and that's good. Often, there's no additional solder required for this step (but sometimes it's useful to add more). Again: Too hot and the solder flows away and the flux burns. Too cold, and it looks weird and instead of glassy. In the middle is good.

6. Remove heat. Don't move anything but the iron; just let the temperature drop until things turn solid.

Anyway, wire is easy to find. And a bag of cheap switches shouldn't cost too much. :)

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Now, that said: I live in the States, where we never adopted RoHS. It's very simple for me to get solder with lead in it and that's the usual thing to see on any repair bench.

Lead-free solder is relatively unusual, and is not something I care to work with any more than I have to. I do not enjoy encountering it during repairs, mostly because it seems like it takes an astounding amount of heat to get it to do anything but laugh at me.

And really, for occasional hobbyist use, lead isn't a problem: Wash your hands afterwards, keep your work area clean, and don't let kids play with it. :)

What kind of solder are you using?