Cold Solder

In this project, I was tasked with creating a starlight water design LED project. We were given all of the materials in a kit also including the instructions. First, we practiced our soldering skills. Soldering is the process of melting a lead filled metal, solder, joining to object or in this case, electronics. Then we assembled our starlight water led design by soldering on each individual electronic and LED.

Practicing Soldering

Before heading to the real project, we were tasked with practicing our soldering skills. We had to solder two LED's and two resistors onto a PCB. The PCB is the small green tile base that the components would be soldered onto. The resistors are the tan cylinders with stripes on them and the LED's are the yellow and white bulbs. It did not matter where I placed the components, as this was just to practice our our skills. I placed the components on the board and bent the wires to keep them still. I soldered each wire onto the board. I then trimmed the wires with a wire cutter.

Starlight Water Design Project

This was the actual project I was tasked with. I soldered different groups of components at different times. I started with soldering on the 10k resister, the two circular capacitors, the one red capacitor, the power source where a DC USB cord could be plugged in to power the project, and a small knob to change the pattern and speed of the lights. The capacitors had to be placed into the board a certain way because they have polarity. This means that if they were in the wrong way, my project would not work. They have a long leg and short leg, long meaning positive and short meaning negative. I lined the legs up with the positive and negative indications on the PCB board. In the next group, I soldered on the triodes, which had three legs and had to be specifically placed. They are shaped like a half moon so on the board, they should line up with the half moon drawing indication. I also had to bend the middle leg a bit to allow the wires to go through the holes in the PCB board. Next, I added the two integrated circuits, the big and small. These too had to be placed a certain way. On the circuit itself, there was a half moon indent and it had to be lined up with the half moon drawing on the PCB board. Next I added all of the 200 resistors. I knew that these were the 200 because there were 9 of them as opposed to the 1k, which there were 11. If I had not know the values of the resistors and put them in the wrong spot, my board would not have worked because the lower resistors would have been overwhelmed. I then added all of the 1k resistors in the proper spots. Next, I started on LED's. I did the first row and the center LED, leaving the second next to the center free. I alternated red, yellow, red yellow, etc. After that first row, I repeated this same pattern on all of the seven remaining legs. After all of the legs of the stars were soldered on, there was a square around the center LED free, made by all of the spaces I had left. I soldered the remaining yellow LED's in each spot of this square. Last, I soldered on the wires of the battery holder so that I could light up my board if I didn't have a USB outlet at the ready. 

Problems Faced While Soldering

One major problem that I faced while soldering, one I faced multiple times, was getting solder in places it shouldn't be or making solder bridges. There were many wires that needed to be soldered on, but they were all very close together. Sometimes I would add too much solder and the wires or the solder itself would touch. This is called a solder bridge, because it connects, or makes a bridge, between two things that weren't supposed to be connected. If I had left them, the board would not have worked or lit up. To fix this, I would heat up the unnecessary solder and move or push it away to create a space in between the wires, as there was supposed to be. Sometimes, however, I could not just move the solder. I had to use a device called a solder sucker, to suck up all of the unnecessary solder. To use this device, I pushed down the top of the sucker and heated up the solder I didn't want. Once it was warm and melted, I pressed the button on the sucker and it sucked up all of the unwanted solder.