Jeb's Build

[Jeb Jeb]

Hi Guys,

Just beginning the build process so thought I would start a thread rather than opening a new one every time I have a question as I've already asked a few about painting and finishing the case and transformer bell.  Unfortunately for you guys I'm the kind of person that asks a lot of questions.....  

While everything was sticking and drying, before commencing the main build I thought I should probably practice some soldering.  I've never soldered anything before.  I got a new soldering station - a Hakko FX-888D (which seems very nice) and also picked up a few very cheap components with terminals and some wire to practice some joints.  I'm using Cardas Quad solder and the recommended small chisel tip.  Temp set to 350 degrees celsius.    I'm heating the terminal and the wire as evenly as possible for around 5 or 6 seconds or so before feeding in the solder.

I thought I would use single stranded wire of similar gauge to practice on but all they had was copper wire.  My results trying to solder this to the terminals was very poor.  Could not get the solder to stick to wire at all, in fact it seemed to repel it and just run off and go anywhere but on the wire.  I was really starting to doubt my ability at this point.

Just to experiment I got some other wire I had in the house which was some stranded wire, but silver, and tried that, and it worked like a charm first time and it was easy to load on as much or as little solder as I wanted.  Joint seemed nice and secure and shiny.

Was I doing anything wrong or is it just that its a different type of wire?

Pic attached below - showing the difference, with the successful silver stranded wire joint in the middle.


In other news, the new solder-sucker has been performing admirably and has already seen plenty of action.


Jeb.

[Deluk]

The copper wire looks to be the type used for coils or transformers. As such it has an insulating coating. This is resistant to solder, hence your problem. As a test you can scrape or abrade off some of the coating and then see if it will take solder.

[Jeb Jeb]

Deluk - THANKS!

I did as you suggested and was able to scrape some of it off and it was much improved.  Ugh.  Rookie mistake!  The only way is up now.

Thanks again,

Jeb.

[mcandmar]

That enamel coating is a pain to work with, you can either scrape it off, or burn it off.  Sometimes you can just dip the end of the wire into a hot molten pool of solder and it will burn the coating off.

Also the wire and terminals you are soldering onto will absorb a lot of heat so try bumping the temperature up to 400c. Profile 4 assuming your soldering iron is setup with default values

[Jeb Jeb]

awesome thanks for the tip - is 400 recommended for when doing the crack soldering or do you mean just for the practice terminals/wire?

Is there such a thing as over-heating terminals/solder or as long as you're not melting anything (except the solder) is it all good ?

Jeb.

[mcandmar]

It really depends on what you are soldering.  If your trying to join thick solid wire to a large metal tab you have more material to soak up the heat so it will take much longer to get the two parts hot enough for a good solder connection.  Its best to get in/out quickly with an iron that is hot enough to do the job.  If you find you have to wait for a few seconds for things to heat up enough to flow the solder, your iron isn't hot enough.

On the flip side, small delicate components like LED's and transistors can be damaged with too much heat.  i.e. the little LED's on the speedball boards, you want to add heat, solder, then remove in about the same time it took to read that.

One exception being the center pin of the large TIP50 transistors, those are attached to the metal heatsinks and will require a larger dose of heat to get a proper connection. Personally i would go to 400c to solder those.

[JamieMcC]

I don't know if you are doing so but melting a little solder onto the tip of the iron before you put the solder iron tip on the item to be soldered helps by speeding up the transfer of heat to the terminal/wire much quicker.

[Jeb Jeb]

Great info thank you! In general so far yes I think the solder does take a bit longer than I would like to flow - definitely in comparison to the innerfidelity video I watched where he was in and out with the iron pretty quickly.  I'll try 400 next time, except for the delicate parts, as you say.  I can also work on trying to have more surface area of the tip in contact with the joint.

and Jamie, thanks - that's a great little tip to add a bit of solder to the tip to speed of heat transfer, I remember seeing Tyll do that too - i'll remember to give it a go.

It feels good to have done some soldering practice - I was a bit nervous about it before and now feel more confident about cracking on with the build. 

Jeb.

[Strikkflypilot]

Hi!

Watch these training videos from PACE. Old school, real craftsman stuff.
Great explanations and quick to watch: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL926EC0F1F93C1837

[Jeb Jeb]

That was very cool & much appreciated - I just watched lesson 1 as well as the Bifurcated and hook terminal lessons.  As you say, very old-school and some great information to help understand exactly what I am doing and why.   The dude was pretty emphatic about ideally keeping the solder time to around 2 seconds.

The whole thing was made more epic because the intro to video 1 is somehow reminiscent of the A-Team.  At least to me.  I'm a child of the 80s.

Jeb.

[Paul Birkeland]

I generally solder with the temperature all the way up.  The only places where you have to be careful is on the RCA jacks and power switch.  It can help on the RCA jacks to quickly flow a little solder into the center cup, let it cool, then reheat that solder after 20 seconds and quickly insert the wire to form the connection.

On the power switch, it helps to have a good balance of the tip touching both the switch terminal and the wire.  Properly soldering a switch lug with a soldering station like the FX88 (good choice) will take just a couple of seconds per lug.

-PB

[Doc B.]

Those Pace videos are awesome. We have actually been working on a very introductory video, focused on the actual t-strips and PC boards we use. I think we will simply link the Pace videos for more detailed explanations of solder types, how flux works, etc.

[Jeb Jeb]

Hi guys - thanks for those words of advice.

Unfortunately the thread on one of the locknuts for one of the RCA jacks seems to be shot (it more or less just wiggles its way down over the thread on the RCA jack) so I'm unable to tighten it securely.

I don't have a spare that fits here - since i'm here in the UK I'm fine to just go and grab a new one from a local hardware store but I presume it's imperial sizes right ? so might need to order one online - what size is it and if I can only get a normal thickness nut is that okay to use?

will just crack on securing all the other components in the mean-time.

Cheers!

Jeb.

[Grainger49]

   .  .  .    Unfortunately the thread on one of the locknuts for one of the RCA jacks seems to be shot (it more or less just wiggles its way down over the thread on the RCA jack) so I'm unable to tighten it securely.  .  .  .   

Is the thread stripped or does it not have enough room to tighten down?  My first read made me think that the isolating washers were misaligned and you couldn't get enough threads to tighten it.  If the threads are stripped be certain it is the nut not the jack itself.

[Jeb Jeb]

Thanks Grainger - very quick!

The other non-stripped nut seems to fit both of the jacks okay.  So I think it's just that one stripped nut.

the threads on the RCA jacks are indeed subtly different since the stripped nut passes more or less right over the thread on one of them but still has a little bit of grip on the other jack but not enough to be secure.

But since the good nut seems to fit both okay, I think a new nut will still do the trick, but i'm not sure I can get one locally if its imperial sizes.


Or I can just grab one of these locally if its easier to replace the whole thing and this is a like for like replacement  http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/maplin-gold-teflon-insulated-chassis-phono-socket-black-jz05f



One other thing I need to check before I go any further is when fitting the transformer I noticed that it had some excess varnish/glue around the sides.  I didn't feel like removing them completely but just to tidy up I very gently sanded them flat.  Having read a couple of threads now I'm wondering if that was a bad thing I did - I didn't go crazy with the sanding, just enough to flatten the varnish runs but there were places where the sanding also touched the stacks.  I'm not worried about applying any kind of paint finish if I don't need to.  Pic attached.

Thanks for patience with all the questions.  New HD650s arriving later today

Jeb.