Complete basic soldering set?

[Somerandomtechyboi]

 

Got these a day or 2 ago and just unpacked em, the flux and solder paste have been around for months if not a year now

 

For now id like to resolder and reflash the main bios chip of my other x58a ud3r so itll work again but ill problably toy around with voltmodding later on when i buy a multimeter and some trimpots (mainly for volt adjustment on the fly and uneccesarily large voltage ranges like 3v+ ddr3)

 

The female-female jumpers can be ignored (not relevant for soldering) as the store i was buying happened to have em so bought those for screwing around with flashing via spi header and getting postcodes from an lpc debug card

 

 

Now im just wondering if theres anything missing here for a basic solder job (desoldering and resoldering a bios chip) as thats the first thing ill do with this set

 

is there anything else to do when using these for the first time aside from tinning the tips of the irons? Cause i do know that ill need to tin the tips of the irons so theyll actually be useful and not oxidized to shit like my other much cheaper solder irons (which have now been delegated to plastic welding/melting)

 

And if these irons are not grounded howd i go about grounding them? I do have 2 after all mostly to dual wield them to make desoldering stuff that needs multiple points heated easier

[Needfuldoer]

Looks like you've got everything you need.

 

I'd recommend getting a temperature controlled iron though. The kind you've got will work, but a better station will make the job easier. (Personally I like the Weller WES51 and WESD51, but I'm not sure if they're available in Europe. You don't need to go hog-wild with an expensive Hakko iron either.) If all you have is a conical tip, you'll have a hard time with surface-mount parts.

 

How much experience do you have? If this is your first soldering project, you'll want to practice on some boards you don't care about. Pick up a secondhand DVD player and practice removing and installing parts. Put together a couple project kits like the ones Velleman sells.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

4 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Looks like you've got everything you need.

 

I'd recommend getting a temperature controlled iron though. The kind you've got will work, but a better station will make the job easier. (Personally I like the Weller WES51 and WESD51, but I'm not sure if they're available in Europe. You don't need to go hog-wild with an expensive Hakko iron either.) If all you have is a conical tip, you'll have a hard time with surface-mount parts.

 

How much experience do you have? If this is your first soldering project, you'll want to practice on some boards you don't care about. Pick up a secondhand DVD player and practice removing and installing parts. Put together a couple project kits like the ones Velleman sells.

Yes no experience and i have like 20 fully dead boards that i dont give a crap about, and now that i think of it maybe i shoulda bought those sop to dip adapters too cause ill probs salvage these sop chips and turn them into socketed dip ones just so i dont have to go out and buy scrap mobos just to get a 2/4/8mb socketed chip, but oh well

 

And both of them i bought as sets that come with a holder, a tiny ass sponge, and 5 tips, so no not just a conical tip

 

Kinda curious if those automotive sponges on the left would work for cleaning these irons cause i just impulse bought them cause cheap and i can probs clean cases better with em (get rid of surface dust, mostly just cleaning just before taking photos)

 

 

As for extra soldering practice with actual projects to prep for stuff like voltmods after i wanna move on from just desoldering bios chips and actually buy a multimeter and some trimpots ill problably just sack more of those dead boards since theyre basically worthless and i have a ton of them piled up

 

Now that i think of it the next thing i definitely want to do is voltmod cause my giga g31m seems like it could go further with more nb volt and it does suck that its limited to only 1.6v vcore cause i wanna screw around with clocking cheddar mill p4 and celeron d with it and 1.6v aint enough thats for sure

[Heats with Nvidia]

20 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Looks like you've got everything you need.

 

I'd recommend getting a temperature controlled iron though. The kind you've got will work, but a better station will make the job easier. (Personally I like the Weller WES51 and WESD51, but I'm not sure if they're available in Europe. You don't need to go hog-wild with an expensive Hakko iron either.) If all you have is a conical tip, you'll have a hard time with surface-mount parts.

 

How much experience do you have? If this is your first soldering project, you'll want to practice on some boards you don't care about. Pick up a secondhand DVD player and practice removing and installing parts. Put together a couple project kits like the ones Velleman sells.

That advice would have been sound until a couple of years ago, but now, these Weller stations simply are obsolete museum pieces. Because for the price of a single used one, you can get a lot better soldering irons that are new and superior in almost every respect. If you have one, sell it and get a Pinecil, TS100 or others like it and it will be a big upgrade.

 

32 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

is there anything else to do when using these for the first time aside from tinning the tips of the irons? Cause i do know that ill need to tin the tips of the irons so theyll actually be useful and not oxidized to shit like my other much cheaper solder irons (which have now been delegated to plastic welding/melting)

 

And if these irons are not grounded howd i go about grounding them? I do have 2 after all mostly to dual wield them to make desoldering stuff that needs multiple points heated easier

If you want to do solder anything else in the future and you can afford it, do yourselfes the huge favour and buy a proper soldering iron. It will make everything soooo much easier. I absolutely reccommend the Pinecil, the big tip set and the silicone cable for it. Thats the cheapest way to get some really decent kit. It can be USB-C powered, if you already have a suitable power brick, but if you haven`t, they also sell those at a reasonable price.

 

This set on this website is one of the best deals you can get right now.

 

Also, when you solder, please use the biggest tip you can. That cone shaped tip that most irons come with, is near unusable for anything else than precise rework on easy to solder boards. Because this tip has almost no surface area to touch the component and board and also due to its cone shape it has the least thermal mass and highest thermal resistance of almost all of them. When i use my TS100, which is very similar, i almost exclusively use the C4 tip. Especially for SMD rework. The cone shaped tip comes in, when the C4 is too big to get to the solder joint without burning or soldering neighbouring components.

 

I have quite the experience when it comes to soldering and those TS100-type irons really were a revelation when i bought the first one. Until then, i used a 400€ Ersa station exclusively and even the old TS100 could do 95% of what i could do with that Ersa. If you ever have more money, the next step up would be a JBC, which i use now, but those are in another league, especially price wise. But if you do this for a living or even quite often as a hobby, they are worth it. But even then its very handy to have a Pinecil or TS100 around for when you are on the go or quickly need to solder something that is not on the workbench. So far, i had 3 TS100 and one Pinecil.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

29 minutes ago, Heats with Nvidia said:

That advice would have been sound until a couple of years ago, but now, these Weller stations simply are obsolete museum pieces. Because for the price of a single used one, you can get a lot better soldering irons that are new and superior in almost every respect. If you have one, sell it and get a Pinecil, TS100 or others like it and it will be a big upgrade.

 

If you want to do solder anything else in the future and you can afford it, do yourselfes the huge favour and buy a proper soldering iron. It will make everything soooo much easier. I absolutely reccommend the Pinecil, the big tip set and the silicone cable for it. Thats the cheapest way to get some really decent kit. It can be USB-C powered, if you already have a suitable power brick, but if you haven`t, they also sell those at a reasonable price.

 

This set on this website is one of the best deals you can get right now.

 

Also, when you solder, please use the biggest tip you can. That cone shaped tip that most irons come with, is near unusable for anything else than precise rework on easy to solder boards. Because this tip has almost no surface area to touch the component and board and also due to its cone shape it has the least thermal mass and highest thermal resistance of almost all of them. When i use my TS100, which is very similar, i almost exclusively use the C4 tip. Especially for SMD rework. The cone shaped tip comes in, when the C4 is too big to get to the solder joint without burning or soldering neighbouring components.

 

I have quite the experience when it comes to soldering and those TS100-type irons really were a revelation when i bought the first one. Until then, i used a 400€ Ersa station exclusively and even the old TS100 could do 95% of what i could do with that Ersa. If you ever have more money, the next step up would be a JBC, which i use now, but those are in another league, especially price wise. But if you do this for a living or even quite often as a hobby, they are worth it. But even then its very handy to have a Pinecil or TS100 around for when you are on the go or quickly need to solder something that is not on the workbench. So far, i had 3 TS100 and one Pinecil.

Dont really care about portability

 

after these solder irons id look at a solder station, mainly interested in t12 solder stations cause apparently theyre better than those cheap 936 stations, but i wonder if i need 2 of these to dual wield solder irons or can i just hook 2 tips to one station by modifying the thing?

[Heats with Nvidia]

36 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Dont really care about portability

 

after these solder irons id look at a solder station, mainly interested in t12 solder stations cause apparently theyre better than those cheap 936 stations, but i wonder if i need 2 of these to dual wield solder irons or can i just hook 2 tips to one station by modifying the thing?

Function wise, those T12 stations can be better than the Pinecil. But many of them are of questionable quality and occasionally not even electrically safe.

 

Also no, you either need two stations, or one that is built to accept two irons at the same time, because they need to be regulated separately.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

2 hours ago, Heats with Nvidia said:

Function wise, those T12 stations can be better than the Pinecil. But many of them are of questionable quality and occasionally not even electrically safe.

 

Also no, you either need two stations, or one that is built to accept two irons at the same time, because they need to be regulated separately.

Mainly looking at those t12 since i do intend on screwing with power planes on mobos at some point (desoldering mosfets on the vrms or desoldering whatever on the vrms) which i kinda doubt a tiny solder like the pinecil can do, or maybe thats the job of a heatgun and not a soldering iron and i can get 1500w ish heatguns for like 8$

 

Also pinecils arent available here aside from stupid overpriced preorder listings, just the ts100

 

As for electrical safely i assume just needing to ground the tip of the iron? In that case howd i go about grounding the tip of a solder iron? Cause im pretty sure these irons i just bought arent exactly grounded, or at the very least how to discharge the tip of any esd if i cant constantly hook it up to ground

[Heats with Nvidia]

1 hour ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Mainly looking at those t12 since i do intend on screwing with power planes on mobos at some point (desoldering mosfets on the vrms or desoldering whatever on the vrms) which i kinda doubt a tiny solder like the pinecil can do, or maybe thats the job of a heatgun and not a soldering iron and i can get 1500w ish heatguns for like 8$

 

Also pinecils arent available here aside from stupid overpriced preorder listings, just the ts100

 

As for electrical safely i assume just needing to ground the tip of the iron? In that case howd i go about grounding the tip of a solder iron? Cause im pretty sure these irons i just bought arent exactly grounded, or at the very least how to discharge the tip of any esd if i cant constantly hook it up to ground

The Pinecil can do these things and is in stock. Grounding is not the problem, the problem is, that some of those are just a not safe construction and under some circumstances you might end up with mains voltage on the tip and case  instead of nothing or ground. And yes, the Pinecil can be grounded.

 

Also on heatguns, power is absolutely not everything.