[Toutouxc]

For anyone thinking about learning to solder, there are several levels of what you can do with a soldering iron. The surface-mount stuff and ovens and microscopes, that's like level 3.

Level 1 is just being able to take two wires and connect them, reliably and cleanly. That's already immensely useful and requires very little skill and equipment. $50 gets you a nice soldering pen, another $50 gets you some tweezers, some flux and a roll of solder and you're set. Work near an open window and have a desk fan blow the fumes away from you, and you're already being more responsible than most people.

Level 2 is something like through-hole soldering, soldering wires to pads, the kind of stuff you'd do working with ESP32, building RC cars, FPV drones or custom IoT devices. Still easy to learn, just a few simple rules. Work quickly, know when to give up and let things cool down. Avoid touching the expensive e-ink display with your soldering iron. Get something better for fume extraction, spend 10 hours soldering and bam, you're better at soldering than literally 99% people out there, you can build and repair all kinds of stuff. This is where most of the cool YouTube stuff happens, your rctestflight and Tom Stanton and Stuff Made Here and Styropyro. You can do most of that with $300-$800 worth of gear, depending on how brave you are.

And then you can worry about SMDs and reflowing and other arcane stuff, or decide that you probably won't need it.

[muvlon]

In my head, the levels are exactly swapped. Connecting two wires together reliably is harder than through-hole in my experience. Through-hole PCBs are actually designed for solder, so surface tension basically does your job for you. Also, with the PCB you have a solid surface to push on, whereas with two wires everything's a little bit more loose. Lastly, if you want the connection between the wires to actually be reliable, you're probably looking at splicing, which takes some more skill yet.

[Toutouxc]

Interesting. I guess I see through-hole stuff as more advanced because if a PCB is involved, there’s usually something expensive around there that you can actually damage with a (genuinely!) poor soldering technique. Through-hole or pads, that’s ESPs and drone flight controllers territory for me, or building DIY batteries.

A random frayed power cord, well, you can dump a ton of heat in it and start 6 times over and it won’t really matter. Worst case you replace some isolation or a warped connector.

[skiing_crawling]

Same for me. I find through hole easy and can do it reliable. Soldering 2 wires together...I always mess it up. But its something I rarely do.

[zero_k]

You don't need $300 gear to do Level 2. A lot of people who are pretty up there the "pro" scale use something similar to a FNIRSI DWS-200 200W, which I bought for $90, with shipping. It comes with 8 tips, and is extremely tight, supports fast tip switching, very fast heating (auto-spleep, etc), very nice interface, short tip, etc. Yes, the tip is not well-calibrated temp wise, but you can get a non-certified calibrator for $15. I work on RC planes and associated flight controllers with it all day long. The annoyingly expensive area is the hot air station, actually, but that's really a bit "out there" -- the cheap(er) copies don't yet exist, so it's still on the expensive side. A good hot air station is where it's more like lev 2.5 -- with it, you can do HDMI/USB port changes reliably, and in seconds. The BGA etc. is lev 3.

Beyond the soldering iron, my recommendations that are not too obvious at first sight:

* solder paste (verrrry useful, just get it, and use it)

* something to purify air that _pulls_ it (a reverse fan) with a carbon filter (~30 USD)

* magnifying glass, hopefully attached to a ring of LEDs + a stand so you can see what you are doing (30-60 USD)

* solder sucker, hopefully automated (5 USD non-automated, 80 USD+ automated)

[rcxdude]

I do a lot of SMD rework and TBH soldering two wires together cleanly can still be a bigger pain in the backside. It's different, but not necessarily much more difficult (until you get to footprints like QFNs and BGAs where you can't see the pads at all, at least).

[Jolter]

Well, you’re saying that after you already learned how to do it.

[fsniper]

I am very new to the crafts and I can attest trying to solder smd stuff, with correct equipment is way easier than soldering 2 wires correctly together. And I also kinda hate QFN like packages where you can’t see the pads.

[tw85]

One of reasons I think people who don't have training in it struggle with soldering is Hollywood's depiction of it. You typically see the actor make a quick stabbing motion with the soldering iron, as if wielding a knife. The solder will already be held against the wire or PCB pad, and in comes the stab. It's almost as comically bad as Hollywood's depictions of computer 'hacking'.

Proper order of operations:

(1) soldering iron to metal first to heat up the wire / pad / pin

(2) apply solder at junction of soldering iron and wire / pad / pin

(3) remove solder

(4) remove iron

And the most important basic tip is to make sure you have the appropriate soldering iron tip for the job. Pointy tips intended for precision work don't provide enough heat transfer for soldering larger pads or wires.

[zajio1am]

IMHO soldering two wires together (or wires to connectors) is much harder and requires higher dexterity than through-hole soldering on PCB, which is really easy. PCB holds parts in place and directs solder where it belongs.

[bombela]

I find SMD the easiest. Using a pinecil soldering iron, or a cheap hot air station. Then through hole, because it's annoying to hold and flip the PCB around without everything falling. And finally soldering two wires is just an exercise in frustration. Helping hands or not, it's just plain annoying.