What soldering iron are you using?

That will happen if the surfaces are dirty, or have a coating of some sort that prevents bare metal contact with the solder. In school we used to have soldering rosin to apply to the joint to be soldered first. This dissolves any coatings/crud on the metal as the heat hits it and allows the solder to adhere to the metal. Use that, or get rosin core solder.
Cleaning up the joint afterwards with an old toothbrush and some rubbing alcohol is a good idea when using rosin.

 

Score of a find.

 

This guy is EXTREMELY ANNOYING but knows his soldering. I've watched several videos on YouTube and these have been the most informative.

http://youtu.be/J5Sb21qbpEQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYz5nIHH0iY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9FC9fAlfQE

 

Using Hakko 925 ESD Safe. Awesome little iron station to bad discontinued.

 

Anyone have a soldering station they want to sell? I'm just a novice and want to get something decent but cant afford 80 bucks right now.

 

Used to have one of those. When it shit the bed, we replaced it with a variable-current base with a standard 2-prong so we can use any pencil up to 40w.

More than adequate for the limited component-level repairs and modifications we do. Just too much liability in bench repair of traffic signal equipment these days, plus the cost... We'll troubleshoot it to the board level. It's not worth spending $300 in labor and parts to take it to the component level, replace the component(s), then 2 days testing on a $50-$200 board.

Then if there's an accident, even if the repaired component is not involved, whoever did the repair gets to go to court and explain their qualifications.

 

I have a similar if not the exact same model.

 

Pace sensatemp.
I hate the Weller solder guns. Piss poor temp management.

 

thats the one my dad has super old too

 

As far a qualification goes, I had to take a IPC certification course. Easy as hell but I was unpleasantly surprised at the folk that took the same course as me that couldn't pass it and they were working on the same line as me with more experience.
The examples of what was acceptable for consumer goods was rather discouraging from a consumer stand point.

 

I use an ECG 60w. Its cheap and serves its purpose well. I just need it for RC batery connecotrs, speed controls, etc. And the rare occasion that I have to splice a wiring harness.

 

i had to take that class 2 semesters ago at my school...easier than i thought only thing thats a pain is soldering under a micro scope with a super thin point

 

I don't miss doing smt components.
I never did like working with the "Mantis"

 

Many years ago (okay, 15 or so), a manufacturer of one of the products that I installed asked what they could do to their product to prevent bench techs from attempting repairs and instead just sending the item in.

I told him:

1 - Go SMT. Even if the components aren't even powered, simply having SMT on the board will spook 75% of the bench techs in our field.

2 - Hammer your component density. If the tech can't get a 16" diameter probe to the component base without shorting something, he's not going to try.

3 - Bump your warranty.



In the end, they went with all 3. I didn't know it, but they were working on the designs for the next generation product, and the new design was 90% SMT.
They went from a 12 month warranty to 36 month

Component density was a hybrid. They were tight, not too tight to work on, but they went to a stacked daughterboard arrangement with 4-layer boards that were impossible to do bench work on without some very specialized extender cards/headers, and they did not use OTC connectors for the headers and other on-board connectors.

 

my eyes were bad in 1994 and they haven't gotten any better. One of the better soldering guys on my line was colorblind and it was interesting when we went from numbered cables to color coding.
These days I stay clear of screwing around with SMT