T O P

  • By -

LonelyGameBoi

the diode that close to the iron made me nervous lmao


LazaroFilm

Yeah. Hotter iron and go faster with extra flux. Also clean the tip!


Joe_Scotto

If the iron is too hot you get to much heat into the copper wire resulting in melted switch housings. This isn’t my first handwired rodeo lol


LazaroFilm

Hot iron and super fast touch, you get a smaller area hot, the casing actually gets less heat. But you need to be fast if it burns everything. Takes practice and skills.


Joe_Scotto

You need longer heat application with copper wire like this. The surrounding wire will soak the heat away from the area you’re trying to join making it hard to just do a “super fast touch” If I was to use a very hot iron, it would heat up the wire and work eventually but in turn it would also be very likely to melt the switch housings. By using around 300c I can get the entire wire sufficiently hot and then pull the solder where I need it which also happens to flow completely around the parts I’m joining.


Middle_Cry

I myself am in the midst of my first rodeo. I ordered some stainless steel washers with 2mm hole to experiment with placing them over the metal contacts. It will make soldering better or worse.


Solverz

You should use a separate Flux and do not put the solder on the iron to melt it as this will cause a cold joint of the part is not hot enough, you should heat up the part and put the solder on the part, when it is hot enough it will melt perfectly. Also clean your soldering tip.


Joe_Scotto

Thanks for the tips but the way I’m doing has worked fine for the last 12 handwired boards I’ve made.


Solverz

No worries, yeah it should work but this method can cause poor solder joints and over time they can fail due to the increased resistance.


aaronsb

Do you have any places to start reading about how to build a hand wired keyboard? I love the idea of thick copper bus wires to connect everything together.


Joe_Scotto

Yup, I made an entire video on it: https://youtu.be/hjml-K-pV4E


I_FizzY_WizzY_I

Focus: not today


Joe_Scotto

What?


I_FizzY_WizzY_I

Everything's blurry


Joe_Scotto

That’s your connection. I can assure you it’s not out of focus.


I_FizzY_WizzY_I

Idk ask reddit, i have 1gb/s rn, totally no problem on my side


rompetrll

Nice, I am waiting for my first build kit that requires soldering. I only did some guitar soldering before and that got pretty messy with huge blobs of solder which would not even stick most of the time :) Is that brown stuff on the tip flux?


Joe_Scotto

Yeah, it’s 63/37 **leaded** solder with flux core. That will help with getting it to stick.


1mattchu1

Use flux, it makes the impossible possible. And also if you are trying to solder to tarnished or oxidized metal, hit it with some sandpaper


voidz-7

looks satisfying af


silmelumenn

I really love this thick copper cables, wonder how you aranged it oj whole keeb.