5 top soldering mistakes made by beginners

Are you doing this? Don't worry, I've done all of these mistakes myself. And sometimes it still works. But by learning the correct soldering technique, you reduce the chances of mistakes in your circuit caused by a bad solder joint. Here are the most common mistakes I've seen in my soldering workshops: ​ ** 1. Removing the soldering iron too soon ** A common mistake I've seen is students heating the pad and the pin with their soldering iron, then removing it before trying to apply the solder. This will unfortunately not work very well. When you remove the iron, the pad and pin will cool down quickly so the solder won't melt. When soldering, you should first heat the pin and the pad, apply the solder, stop applying solder, and THEN remove the soldering iron. ​ ** 2. Heating only the pad ** Another common mistake is to heat only the pad, and not the pin. If you try to apply solder after only heating the pad, the solder will not connect properly to the pin. It might look okay from a distance, but in reality, there is no connection between the pin and the pad. ​ ** 3. Cutting pins too short ** To make the board look nice and neat, I've seen students push the component all the way into the hole and then cut the pin so that it doesn't stick out of the board at all. This makes it hard to solder the pin. The student might end up with some solder covering the hole but without a connection to the pin. ​ ** 4. Using too little solder ** Some students are afraid of using too much solder, so they apply only a tiny bit. The amount of solder isn't the most important thing, but it's usually better to apply a good dose of solder to a solder joint, just to make sure it connects properly. ​ ** 5. Afraid to heat the joint too much ** The circuit board can handle a lot. I have seen students worry about heating the board too much. So they try to solder the solder joint in less than a second, just to keep from burning the circuit board. You could damage a sensitive component by too much heat from the solder joint, I've heard, but I've never seen it happen. Allow yourself a few seconds to heat the solder joint properly. ​ Keep On Soldering! Oyvind @ build-electronic-circuits.com PS! Soldering is one of the skills you learn at Ohmify. In addition to circuit board design, microcontrollers, and much more. You can also learn basic soldering from my eBook Getting Started With Electronics. It's a step-by-step guide with simple instructions to get started building electronics. Perfect for complete beginners.

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