While soldering is not that hard, different tasks require different tools. Most of them can be from very cheap to very expensive. As a beginner I'd recommend the following:
A small USB-C soldering iron supported by IronOS[1], e.g. Pinecil vor TS100
A solid stand with brass wool
A KU soldering tip (looks a bit like a knife) for good heat transfer, too small tips are not good
Thin (<=0.5mm) solder wire
No clean flux (not a pen)
Isopropyl alcohol
Solder fume extractor (DIY is OK, if you're building it right) is good for your health
Solder mat (blue silicone)
Multimeter (not too cheap, around 20 bucks)
Self closing tweezers
Normal tweezers
A wirecutter (blue 5 bucks from ali express)
Manual Desoldering pump (engineer ss03 or a clone for cheaper)
Most important is cleaning (alcohol, then flux) and heat transfer (tin your tip, your pads or your wire before putting things together to ensure good heat transfer). Cleanup nicely and tin your tip after soldering to prevent corrosion.
Optional but helpful for more professional tasks:
Hot air station
Auto Desoldering pump (ZD-8965)
Adjustable power supply (fnirsi usbc, 30 bucks)
Oscilloscope (mini beginner with display Cost around 30 bucks)
Maybe a bit over the top for a lot of situations. I assume folks would acquire these things over a long period of time depending on their projects or what they are repairing. I have a 2-ch function generator coming because after 20 years of bodging stuff together and fixing minor things, I am tired of using the super cheapo one I got back in the day. It takes a while to amass all that crap, but it's fun.
A couple other thoughts: used hemostats are super helpful for a lot of things. for a lot of years I avoided getting any kind of "3rd hand" because I would use combinations of hemostats.
Or jigs- I have a very old piece of wood that has hole drilled for m and f XLR and 1/4 audio connectors with notes about which pin is which. Making tools like that is quite satisfying.
I really enjoy having a stack of stainless steel condiment cups to put screw in- I stack them up during a disassembly and then unstack them as I reassemble.
Also I will say that while I thought building one of those cheap-o oscilloscope kits was a pretty fun practice and I can recommend that, I don't fine them easy enough to use for beginners... the 2-ch Rigol scope I got was not super expensive and felt like the cheapest thing I'd be recommending to folks.
Finally, I have had a lot of mixed successes with desoldering pumps. It took me a long time to figure out that I can only get desoldering braid to work if I put liquid flux on it, but that made it a lot cleaner for me than the solder suckers.
Oh I forgot... a big magnifier glass (8x to 15x) with an LED light is way cheaper than a microscope and very helpful for small parts soldering (SMD) :-)
For me, as there are so many "variables" when soldering, the most difficult thing is knowing what's wrong.
For example, you end up with a poor soldering. You try again, and again, but it doesn't get better. Maybe only worse. But what was wrong?
- Was the temperature OK? (And is my iron reporting the real temperature? Should I spend another 300 bucks in a soldering tip thermometer?)
- Maybe the solder I bought is not appropriate?
- Was it the flux? Did I apply it correctly?
- Also, is this tip the best one for the job? Besides, I could have damaged it before when trying to solder and it's not good anymore, although looks good to me
- Or my technique isn't good enough. Am I drag soldering this right? Maybe I should apply heat for longer? But what if I damage the component?
You don't need any real educational resources to get good at soldering. Any random primer will do. It's genuinely a simple task that doesn't require a lot of explanation or have a lot of tricks.
What gets you good at soldering is just practice. Solder a lot. A fun and easy way to do this is to pick up those cheap ($5 or less) electronic solder-it-yourself kits and do a bunch of them. Include ones that contain small surface mount parts.
You can also practice desoldering on them, or pick up broken electronics and desolder parts from those.
> managed to desolder and resolder a stick but the controller doesn't turn on anymore.
There's a chance to practice repair (which is a completely different topic from soldering)! Odds are very high the problem is that you've made an unwanted solder bridge or you have a cold solder joint.
Seconding the practice-kit thing, but for the dead DS4 specifically: before you go hunting the joint you reworked, check whether you lifted a pad or cooked a via near the stick. On those boards the stick pins sit right next to thin traces and a hot iron parked too long will pull the pad up with the pin. Easiest check is continuity from each stick pin to wherever the trace lands, and check 3.3V is present with it plugged in - if the rail is gone you probably bridged something, not broken the stick.
Other thing that got me: no-clean flux residue plus a cheap iron with a bad ground can look like a dead board when it's just leakage. Clean it with IPA and a brush and retest before desoldering anything else.
You don't need to spend a lot of money so I'll keep it simple:
Get yourself a few kits of SMD soldering components and practice. Amazon, AliExpress, whatever.
Some notes on technique:
You will be surprised at the tip size that works well - usually slightly larger is actually better, just need to get comfortable with the angle and size.
Have a magnifying lamp or something like that to help you see better.
You should always use alcohol (70-99% IPA) and flux. Clean everything properly, then flux it, then solder it. Then clean after you're done. Have a few flux pens on hand. MG Chemicals sells these things. You can also get the bottle version and some empty bottles with syringes that mount on top.
Using a "shoe" iron tip is nice because you can angle it between the lead of the component (through-hole) and the pad, and this gives you a little entry way for your solder to flow. The flowing, hot solder will then naturally heat up the rest of the pad. This is a thermal mass effect.
The alternative of having the iron tip on one side of the lead, and the solder wire on the other is not bad either. This makes the solder "flow" across the pad, but it does mean you don't get the thermal mass effect of the first approach. You may need to do this in tighter spaces. Regulate temperature wisely.
For through-hole components, most often the hole itself is plated so it is a double-sided pad, give it an extra 0.5-1s for the solder to go to the other side appropriately.
Make sure you have small wire cutters and nose pliers. The nose pliers are very handy when you need to shape the leads of transistors or chips that have 4-5 legs exactly to the through-hole positioning. Not usual, but not uncommon to see staggered layout.
You will make mistakes. You won't know what you are doing because no amount of tutorials can help here. We have all busted boards for various reasons. Just don't electrocute yourself on high voltage capacitor banks.
My late friend Ward was a strong supporter of Build-a-Blinkie[1] and their mission to teach people to solder by doing.
My friend Jim's been soldering since the 1950s. We solder a lot of things with leads, for this, his method is to get each item to be joined tinned, then use solder as a mechanical joint. Melt in the solder, remove the iron but hold them together, then once cool, tug on the joint to make sure it holds.
I picked up the skill from my granddad when I was a kid. Yeah, 6 year old with a soldering iron, what could go wrong, right? Welcome to eastern Europe. There are really 2 things: good soldering iron(and soldering helping hands kit) and practice. Which takes me to one of my hobbies: drones. Look up a kit called Diatone Mamba soldering practice board. They cost 2-3 bucks, get 10 and you'll get the hang of it in a few hours. Oh and a fume extractor(any old pc fan will do).
FYI you're trying to repair surface-mounted components by hand, that's pretty tricky. Most hand soldering is done with through hole components, not surface mounted. Not to say it can't be done, but you're starting on hard mode for sure.
I'll also echo the "practice kit" thing, especially for desoldering- solder stuff on, take it off, do it agin.
Also, good tools and supplies- kester solder and liquid flux.
It took me quite a while to figure out that my preferences are for desoldering braid that's been soaked with liquid flux- if I use a manual pump it's going to be rough. I am hoping to get a hot air station at some point but I haven't been doing enough work to justify it over my ancient hakko.
With the correct tools and materials soldering can be very easy or with the wrong tools very difficult!
There are probably some great videos on soldering on YouTube, luckily it's a mature field so not much has changed!
Some random tips...
Lead solder is easier to work with, but with lead free make sure you are using the right flux and temperature.
It helps to preheat things as much as you can. You want to have a hot pad and hot lead, then add solder to that. As opposed to putting a blob of solder on the iron and trying to apply it like glue.
Too much heat can damage the board or part of course.
Use the right tips. Fatter tips can help more evenly apply heat.
If there is a lot of copper like a ground plane, it can take longer to heat.
Watch for cold joints!
Just overall think about getting the parts you want solder on hot, touch solder to it, remove heat.
Get a soldering practice kit. If you're doing surface mount, get a SMD one. For next level practice, checkout azonenberg's rework challenge: https://github.com/azonenberg/reworkctf. He also has some YouTube video about it.
Right. Search "surface mount soldering practice kit". For about $4, you get a board and some parts to practice on. Get a few of those kits, and keep doing them until the result looks really good. I went through about three of those before I attempted anything real.
You really do need all those little tools, plus a good soldering station, and possibly a hot-air rework station. Get a smoke extractor fan. Learn to use lead-free solder with a small silver component. That gets the melting point down. Visit a place that repairs cell phones and see what they have.
You can buy a whole lot of practise kits on Amazon. Start with push-through components and move on to surface-mount if you fancy that.
I'd recommend checking out one of the many youtube channels who do repairs for an idea of the tools and stuff you need. Many have links and most use similar tools.
For $300 in tools from AliExpress you can have a pretty complete setup.
For teens ages 13-18, Hack Club is running a free grant program to help kids learn to solder! They can sign up and get a free kit from us at https://solder.hackclub.com/
A small USB-C soldering iron supported by IronOS[1], e.g. Pinecil vor TS100
A solid stand with brass wool
A KU soldering tip (looks a bit like a knife) for good heat transfer, too small tips are not good
Thin (<=0.5mm) solder wire
No clean flux (not a pen)
Isopropyl alcohol
Solder fume extractor (DIY is OK, if you're building it right) is good for your health
Solder mat (blue silicone)
Multimeter (not too cheap, around 20 bucks)
Self closing tweezers
Normal tweezers
A wirecutter (blue 5 bucks from ali express)
Manual Desoldering pump (engineer ss03 or a clone for cheaper)
Most important is cleaning (alcohol, then flux) and heat transfer (tin your tip, your pads or your wire before putting things together to ensure good heat transfer). Cleanup nicely and tin your tip after soldering to prevent corrosion.
Optional but helpful for more professional tasks:
Hot air station
Auto Desoldering pump (ZD-8965)
Adjustable power supply (fnirsi usbc, 30 bucks)
Oscilloscope (mini beginner with display Cost around 30 bucks)
Capton tape
Solid Copper wire
1: https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS
Maybe a bit over the top for a lot of situations. I assume folks would acquire these things over a long period of time depending on their projects or what they are repairing. I have a 2-ch function generator coming because after 20 years of bodging stuff together and fixing minor things, I am tired of using the super cheapo one I got back in the day. It takes a while to amass all that crap, but it's fun.
A couple other thoughts: used hemostats are super helpful for a lot of things. for a lot of years I avoided getting any kind of "3rd hand" because I would use combinations of hemostats.
Or jigs- I have a very old piece of wood that has hole drilled for m and f XLR and 1/4 audio connectors with notes about which pin is which. Making tools like that is quite satisfying.
I really enjoy having a stack of stainless steel condiment cups to put screw in- I stack them up during a disassembly and then unstack them as I reassemble.
Also I will say that while I thought building one of those cheap-o oscilloscope kits was a pretty fun practice and I can recommend that, I don't fine them easy enough to use for beginners... the 2-ch Rigol scope I got was not super expensive and felt like the cheapest thing I'd be recommending to folks.
Finally, I have had a lot of mixed successes with desoldering pumps. It took me a long time to figure out that I can only get desoldering braid to work if I put liquid flux on it, but that made it a lot cleaner for me than the solder suckers.
Yes, but buy several. Maybe it's only because I buy cheap crap ones in the first place, but I treat them as consumables.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Sb21qbpEQ
For example, you end up with a poor soldering. You try again, and again, but it doesn't get better. Maybe only worse. But what was wrong?
- Was the temperature OK? (And is my iron reporting the real temperature? Should I spend another 300 bucks in a soldering tip thermometer?)
- Maybe the solder I bought is not appropriate?
- Was it the flux? Did I apply it correctly?
- Also, is this tip the best one for the job? Besides, I could have damaged it before when trying to solder and it's not good anymore, although looks good to me
- Or my technique isn't good enough. Am I drag soldering this right? Maybe I should apply heat for longer? But what if I damage the component?
What gets you good at soldering is just practice. Solder a lot. A fun and easy way to do this is to pick up those cheap ($5 or less) electronic solder-it-yourself kits and do a bunch of them. Include ones that contain small surface mount parts.
You can also practice desoldering on them, or pick up broken electronics and desolder parts from those.
> managed to desolder and resolder a stick but the controller doesn't turn on anymore.
There's a chance to practice repair (which is a completely different topic from soldering)! Odds are very high the problem is that you've made an unwanted solder bridge or you have a cold solder joint.
Other thing that got me: no-clean flux residue plus a cheap iron with a bad ground can look like a dead board when it's just leakage. Clean it with IPA and a brush and retest before desoldering anything else.
Please have a look at PACE soldering/desoldering videos on youtube. They are dated but very good in general. You don't need a lot of videos, just the basics. https://paceworldwide.com/video/basic-soldering-lesson-1-sol...
You don't need to spend a lot of money so I'll keep it simple:
Get yourself a few kits of SMD soldering components and practice. Amazon, AliExpress, whatever.
Some notes on technique:
You will be surprised at the tip size that works well - usually slightly larger is actually better, just need to get comfortable with the angle and size.
Have a magnifying lamp or something like that to help you see better.
You should always use alcohol (70-99% IPA) and flux. Clean everything properly, then flux it, then solder it. Then clean after you're done. Have a few flux pens on hand. MG Chemicals sells these things. You can also get the bottle version and some empty bottles with syringes that mount on top.
Using a "shoe" iron tip is nice because you can angle it between the lead of the component (through-hole) and the pad, and this gives you a little entry way for your solder to flow. The flowing, hot solder will then naturally heat up the rest of the pad. This is a thermal mass effect.
The alternative of having the iron tip on one side of the lead, and the solder wire on the other is not bad either. This makes the solder "flow" across the pad, but it does mean you don't get the thermal mass effect of the first approach. You may need to do this in tighter spaces. Regulate temperature wisely.
For through-hole components, most often the hole itself is plated so it is a double-sided pad, give it an extra 0.5-1s for the solder to go to the other side appropriately.
Make sure you have small wire cutters and nose pliers. The nose pliers are very handy when you need to shape the leads of transistors or chips that have 4-5 legs exactly to the through-hole positioning. Not usual, but not uncommon to see staggered layout.
You will make mistakes. You won't know what you are doing because no amount of tutorials can help here. We have all busted boards for various reasons. Just don't electrocute yourself on high voltage capacitor banks.
My friend Jim's been soldering since the 1950s. We solder a lot of things with leads, for this, his method is to get each item to be joined tinned, then use solder as a mechanical joint. Melt in the solder, remove the iron but hold them together, then once cool, tug on the joint to make sure it holds.
[1] https://build-a-blinkie.org/events.php
Also, good tools and supplies- kester solder and liquid flux.
It took me quite a while to figure out that my preferences are for desoldering braid that's been soaked with liquid flux- if I use a manual pump it's going to be rough. I am hoping to get a hot air station at some point but I haven't been doing enough work to justify it over my ancient hakko.
There are probably some great videos on soldering on YouTube, luckily it's a mature field so not much has changed!
Some random tips...
Lead solder is easier to work with, but with lead free make sure you are using the right flux and temperature.
It helps to preheat things as much as you can. You want to have a hot pad and hot lead, then add solder to that. As opposed to putting a blob of solder on the iron and trying to apply it like glue.
Too much heat can damage the board or part of course.
Use the right tips. Fatter tips can help more evenly apply heat.
If there is a lot of copper like a ground plane, it can take longer to heat.
Watch for cold joints!
Just overall think about getting the parts you want solder on hot, touch solder to it, remove heat.
Don't eat it!
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL926EC0F1F93C1837&si=srD8...
I have not found a modern resource that explains it better.
You really do need all those little tools, plus a good soldering station, and possibly a hot-air rework station. Get a smoke extractor fan. Learn to use lead-free solder with a small silver component. That gets the melting point down. Visit a place that repairs cell phones and see what they have.
After I finished, the right click felt like it was 'glued down' or 'stuck'...
I never heard the click sound again...
Yep, it was broken.
I've decided never to solder anything ever again...
But good luck to you!
I'd recommend checking out one of the many youtube channels who do repairs for an idea of the tools and stuff you need. Many have links and most use similar tools.
For $300 in tools from AliExpress you can have a pretty complete setup.