u/Vegetable_Bit_5157

I'm doing a lot of soldering recently, and I noticed something peculiar - most of the time, it's a non-issue to solder a wire onto a PCD tab or into a through-hole (non-english speaker, not sure what the exact terms are). But with a few modules, it seemed almost impossible to make the solder "connect" to a tab. I tried flux as well, but it took many tries, and I even ruined one module by my continued attempts.

I cannot remember anymore what those components were (I think it was some buck-boost thingy where it was really bad) - so more generally asking, are there some differences in tabs I should be aware of? Can I spot them somehow? Any different techniques I should use?

And I'm sure it's not the iron. I can move on from a "problematic" components one to another and solder just fine.

Hello everyone,

had recently posted a desperate call for advice since soldering didn't seem to work for me...at all. And no advice and no tutorial seemed to help either. Solder not sticking to anything, ever, or burning PCBs before it even gets liquid.

So I figured to buy one of the recommended soldering stations on here (a GEEBOON TC22) to rule out it's a tool issue (I was using some random cheap soldering iron I got in a set)...and boy, was it ever.

The difference is night and day. It just works now. The things people suggested I do? They now actually do what they are supposed to do. The main thing is that now I can actually see where some things are just not working that well because of a lack of skill and practice, and not "just not work ever for no reason". Which allows me to now get better at them.

I guess what I take from it is that it's sometimes perfectly reasonable to blame your tools, and that there's value with getting some reasonable quality tools right from the start, before you get frustrated with the bad ones and stop doing it altogether. I by now have soldered a lot - I had quite a backlog of little projects - and I can really feel how I'm getting better with every one of them done.

No advice needed (for now), just wanted to share, and thank everyone here for their help :)

I've been trying to solder for 10+ years and it just does not ever work. And I'm at my wits end. I look at beginners presenting their work, and everyone seems to be an instant master compared to me.

Can someone please explain to me some basic soldering like connecting two wires like I'm 2 years old?

I currently do the following:

• Strip the wire ends

• Twist the inside strands so it's all straight

• Dip ends in flux

• Heat iron (tried literally every temperature available to my 3 soldering irons for the following)

• Heat wire with the tip of the iron, try to "let solder flow into the wire"

• Absolutely nothing happens

• Try to add solder to the tip directly to transfer it

• Iron doesn't melt the solder for ages, then suddenly just drips off in tin globes

• Try to hold solder directly to wire again, trying to melt it with the iron tip straight to it

• Again, iron doesn't melt the solder for ages, then suddenly just drips off in tin globes

• Give up on tinning the wires in frustration

• Twist both wire ends together

• Spend 10 minutes trying to create globs of solder to drip in just the right spot to encase the twisted mess enough to not pull apart immediately

• Solder job done.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Oxidized tip? I scrub them with the wire mesh, I even sandpapered them, I used fresh, new ones - nothing. Wrong solder? tried various thicknesses, with and without flux inside.

At this point I'm assuming I don't know something that's obvious to everyone else, or all my soldering irons (which admittedly were rather inexpensive) are too crap. As often as I have tried and tried and tried over the years, I refuse to believe this is just an issue of getting a bit more practice - there's something fundamentally wrong with what I'm doing. Does anyone have an idea?