Soldering

This page is meant to be a useful collection of soldering tools and guides.

Soldering accessories

These accessories can make soldering easier.

Digital countdown timer

If you forget to turn off your soldering iron, using a digital count down timer can shut off the power after a given amount of time. You want a timer with a pre-set number of minutes (15, 30, etc.) rather than timers meant to turn on holiday lights for hours at night. In addition to turning off your soldering iron, and preventing a fire, the timer can remind you to take a break when the timer goes down. Here is one such timer. It has been revised in 2020, but the 2018 version works well.

• BN-LINK smart digital timer from ebay
• BN-LINK smart digital timer from amazon.com

Electric solder sucker

A standard tool is a solder sucker that uses vacuum to draw up liquid solder. The usual solder sucker is awkward because you need to hold the soldering iron and the pump at the same time. Velleman and other manufacturers make an electric de-soldering iron and a pump in the same unit. This allows you to place the iron over the part that you need to remove the solder from, let the solder melt, and then press the pump to remove the solder.

• Velleman desoldering vacuum pump with heated tip, store
• Velleman desoldering vacuum pump with heated tip, ebay