A while ago I attempted to solder together a radio that sadly wouldn’t turn on.
But I didn’t give up and decided to get a new radio kit and soldering iron, which was recommended to me by the great Grimtail as well as lead-free solder wire:
The moment I got my new kit I already soldered all the standard components onto the board:
After that I watched a tutorial on how to solder SMD components effectively by eHaJo:
and waited patiently to get the soldering flux.
Once I the package came I proceeded to liberally apply the flux to the SMD pads, placed the component in the right spot and then started applying the soldering wire. Initially I had a lot of trouble because the soldering wire wouldn’t stick to the pads - that’s why I decided to apply a big chunk of molten solder wire and then distributed them across all the pads and removed the excessive molten metal (I had to also increase the temperature of my soldering iron from ~ 250 ˚C to ~ 300 °C so I could work with the metal more easily) and jen:
There were still two components left and sadly the second one slipped a little bit, so the angle of the component was a bit off. I was worried this might lead to a short circuit but the almost magic property of the flux is that the soldering iron will stick to the pads even if the angles are a bit odd:
For the final SMD component I decided to first apply the metal to the pads and then place the flux and the component on it. It worked, but the back part of the component basically sits on the soldering metal and not the pad - it’s alright because it works but I’m not sure if this is the best strategy ot solder.
All that was left to do was to attach the battery pack, antenna, speaker and the plastic housing and then the big moment of truth:
It works! I’m really glad about that! I learned two important lessons, firstly its important not to give up too quickly and second of all who buys cheap buys twice! With that my soldering adventure has come to a close but my exploration of communication systems continues
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