Here are some favourites of mine. We have most of this at vhs but if you can afford it, it can help to have your own. I’m not endorsing any of the sellers below, they are just the first links that came up.
Fine Solder
I use 0.35mm solder, anything under 0.5mm will be good. The finer the better as it helps you control how much solder you apply. I still use tin/lead some day I’ll try unleaded, is meant to be more difficult so not recommended for a beginner.
Soldering iron tip
You don’t need a super fine tip but in general the finer the better. I use a 0.04" conical tip, not sure where the 0.04" is measured.
Tweezers
I prefer blunt fronted tweezers as they have a larger flat surface area (the fine tweezers often have rounded tips making picking up square smd parts difficult).
Interesting, I’ve never seen anyone experienced ever recommend conical tips for, well, anything. Personally I find the “screwdriver” shaped tips much easier to use, more versatile, and even at fairly large sizes still practical. I use a 1.2mm one.
Tweezers
Good tweezers are not that expensive on DigiKey, I’d recommend just tossing them into a parts order instead of going to the trouble of ordering unknown quality stuff from China. I like these, and unlike most, prefer the curved style for SMD work. The cheaper EROP7SA is also good quality but the painted one from Aven is easier to find on the bench and I find the profile more pleasing. Obviously straight and blunt versions are available also.
Flux
Tom, how could you forget! You’ll need flux. I like using this type of squeeze bottle with standard rosin liquid flux:
The flux, as far as I can tell, can’t be shipped to Canada by any of the regular suppliers as they don’t list it in bulk (non-pen) format. It can be had locally or probably gotten from eBay/AliExpress/DX. I use the stuff from MG. Flux pens are easy to get but I prefer the squeeze bottle. On more than one occasion I’ve been frustrated by the dry tip of my flux pen and on pressing the tip to dispense more, flooded my bench with sticky flux…
99% isopropyl, perhaps also in a squeeze bottle like this, is nice to have for cleanup:
@ktims thanks for sharing, you have a good point on the tweezers (although I’ve had no issues with those).
Indeed, it was 4am. I try to get beginners to avoid adding flux, it gets messy quickly. If you get it right first time there is enough flux in the solder to get you by with less mess. I’ve definitely had issues with people obscuring solder bridges with layers of flux.
I tend to ship to Blaine for this kind of thing. I would add flux remover but I’ve not found anything that is not super toxic.
Argh, me too.
I’m not sure that was a recommendation, I use these because they came with the iron and replacements are expensive (metcal). I agree with you although in a fine tip the difference between conical and spade/screwdrivers is somewhat moot.
Added beginners to the title to reflect my intent. I was trying to deflect a whole bunch of questions as people work out how to assemble the pcbs I’m clearing out.
ok, I think typos are expected from me, sorry but a transparent tap is not
much use for soldering.
When I am doing rework, I use transparent tape to hold the pcb to a larger
piece of thick card stock. I found this simple approach works well with
double sided boards.
Slightly off topic but a reminder that once the space is unpacked I’ll set up a bunch of SMD build nights and open up the space for building whatever people want to work on.
Forgot to add these. You can buy them full, I tend to buy them empty. Every time I order parts I round up the order to 100 and store the leftovers for next time. You can start with one, I have at least 6 of them (resistors and capacitors in 1206/0805 and 0603 sizes). You could also stock them from the vhs smd parts (in cases where there are 1000s of parts we will never use).
Adafruit has wider refills that are useful for semiconductors here
Yep, we can start with what we have in the parts collection. Reels of 4000 are only $7-$8 on digikey so with a bunch of people we could make something happen. Filled books are not that expensive either (aliexpress) but the quality may concern some people.
There’s actually a local guy who runs a little shop in a mall in Chinatown selling small tools and probably has one of the best selections of tweezers I’ve seen locally. It’s worth checking it out if you’re in the area.
