SMD soldering – At first, I tinned all the circuit board pads for the SMD chips before trying to mount them. That was a mistake. With both pads for chip tinned, heating up one end of the chip caused ...

We were populating boards sourced from eBay sold specifically for practicing SMD techniques. Solder paste was dispensed from syringes, with modified aquarium pumps used as vacuum tweezers.

Soldering can make or break a PCB, both figuratively and literally. This article offers basic tips and nine specific problems/mistakes to look out for when doing a soldering job.

He uses some extra solder to the wick to prime it, although we often use flux for the same reason. He uses the hot air gun but not solder paste, so you don’t have to worry about storing paste to ...