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Any soldering expert here? Could you help me out?

I

IHAVEAQUESTION

Golden Member
Bought a cheap soldering iron today at Sear, wanted to learn how to solder stuff and eventually fix the main relay on my car. So I tried tonight thinking i should fix something cheap just for practice sake. I plugged in the power, the soldering iron heated up and heated up....but never to the point that it could melt the solder. I waited 40 mins and it still can't so I gave up.

Am I supposed to keep the solder in contact with the soldering iron during the build-up of heat? I watched youtube video, it looks like it melt with just a touch.


I fail. 🙁
 
It's supposed to melt on touch, easily... It'll like blacken and stuff too, because it gets really freaking hot.
 
Make sure the solder you have is low heat, since thats what your gun needs. Also ive noticed that the plug in and warm up ones suck. I had one that had a trigger that worked excellent.
 
how do you tell if the solder is rosin or acid? I read the manual and it says rosin core solder is used for all electrical work. Acid core solder is used only for non-electrical application. I've no idea what solder I have (no label)...i am guessing (hoping) it's rosin core.
 
Not all solder is the same. You want fairly thin, cheap rosin core solder...not silver solder or anything with a higher melting point.
 
maybe if you posted say.. a picture.. or some information pertaining to your solder we could help you. Or would you rather we guess?
 
It's pretty hard to tell the differences between solders by pictures. Silver solder has more of a sheen to it, and is stiffer (almost more like wire than solder...but of course you need to have bent tin/lead solder to tell). But if your soldering iron is getting hot, but the solder is not melting, then I'd say that you probably don't have a low-temperature solder. Try picking up a spool at Radio Shack and I bet it will work just fine.

If you hold your hand near (DO NOT TOUCH) the iron, do you feel the heat radiating off of it? If you drip a single drop of water onto the tip, does it hiss and boil off instantly?
 
If you take a wet sponge and press the tip of the soldering iron against it, does it sizzle and produce steam? If not it is not warm enough.

Making a photo or googling one might help us guess too.
 
well I am lazy to take picture now. It looks just like the one in the video, very easy to bent and very thin in diameter. If I keep it in contact with the iron I can't hold it more than 15 seconds, it gets hot! But not hot enought to melt.

I am going to find a low boiling point solder tmr, so we will see.

Thanks for the responses so far.
 
Originally posted by: IHAVEAQUESTION
Bought a cheap soldering iron today at Sear

I fail. 🙁
Click to expand...


Yes. There is your first mistake. Cheap irons suck. Spend a few bucks and your life will be much easier in regards to this issue.

Once you have a proper soldering iron, learning the technique comes fairly quickly.
 
If this thing has a cartridge heating element, make sure it's screwed all the way together and that the tip is also making good contact.

Since you've heated and cooled it several times, I would disassemble it, wipe the threads down with WD-40 or alcohol if nothing else, and then re assemble and re-test.
Also, the tip needs to be a smooth, raw surface. Once the tip is hot ( wet sponge test) a little solder on the very end should flow and "tin" the tip.
Also use the small screwdriver style, not the pointy tip. until you get it together, that is.
Any retail commercial electronic solder will have flux internally.

Check the irons screw connections, that's why it's not heating.
 
Originally posted by: IHAVEAQUESTION
well I am lazy to take picture now. It looks just like the one in the video, very easy to bent and very thin in diameter. If I keep it in contact with the iron I can't hold it more than 15 seconds, it gets hot! But not hot enought to melt.

I am going to find a low boiling point solder tmr, so we will see.

Thanks for the responses so far.
Click to expand...
Get ahold of yourself man, it's not the solder, it's the iron. Just check it out for proper assembly as posted above.

 
getting things really hot with electricity isn't hard, even cheap irons get very hot. so yea its most likely somethings not quite assembled right with hthe iron
 
Originally posted by: Skyclad1uhm1
If you take a wet sponge and press the tip of the soldering iron against it, does it sizzle and produce steam? If not it is not warm enough.
Click to expand...

This.....If the tip cannot evaporate water it definitely isn't getting hot enough. Try some flux core solder. It's pretty soft stuff similar to handling thin copper wire.

 
Originally posted by: Whoozyerdaddy
Yes. There is your first mistake. Cheap irons suck. Spend a few bucks and your life will be much easier in regards to this issue.

Once you have a proper soldering iron, learning the technique comes fairly quickly.
Click to expand...
Correct. The $10-$20 irons never get hot enough to do any real work. NEVER. No solder change will help that problem. After going through about 5 different sub $20 irons in different parts of my life, I swear never to use one again. I recently got a $70 (on sale) Hakko 936 solder station where you can control the temperature (low to very high). It does everything I've ever wanted and more.
Originally posted by: AlienCraft
Check the irons screw connections, that's why it's not heating.
Click to expand...
This too. The screws on the cheap irons may APPEAR to be connected, but they often aren't. Thus the iron gets slightly warm, but not hot.
 
Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
DO NOT get a cold heat soldering iron, I have yet to see anyone happy with one.
Click to expand...
Yeah, we have one in our shop for very remote repair jobs, like on top of our stacks or other places that are difficult to work in. The end results barely get by, the repair works good enough to get through the night. Yep, emergency repairs in the middle of the night is about all we use it for.

If you want a quality solder job, get a nice unit with the appropriate accessories and good solder.
 
As said earlier, make sure the tip is tightly connected. Even being slightly loose will keep the tip cold.

Try to melt the solder farther back on the iron. If it melts there, the tip is not making good contact.
 
You should be able to touch the solder to the tip and it instantly liquefy, you should also have some flux that will help. When you go to solder you should heat what you are about to solder and then heat that up and let the solder touch the item to be soldered not the iron tip. Also a temp regulated iron is much better, if you get it to hot you can destroy what you are trying to solder.
 
You do NOT want silver solder for electronics. You want tin/lead mix or tin/whatever-they-use-that's-not-lead now.
 
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