How to Solder properly || Through-hole (THT) & Surface-mount (SMD)

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**If You've Ever Watched One of My Project Videos...**

If you ever watched one of my project videos and thought to yourself:

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WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enIf you ever watched one of my project videos and thought to yourself:"This guy has no clue what he's doing. I have to prove him wrong!"Then you had no choiceBut to gather the required components and connect them to one another on a piece of perf board according to my schematicThe process which we use to reliably connect components, Jumper Wires and practically everything else in the circuits isCalled soldering and no matter whether you create an old-school circuits would fool components or solder itsy-bitsysurface-mount components to a PCB a there exists useful guidelines, which make soldering a breezeso in this videoI will present you my technique for both THT and SMD soldering tasks, which up until now were never failed meLet's get started!First off, let's have a look at THT soldering AKA through-hole technologyAround 99% of my created circuits use this technology since it is very simple and accessibleThe things we need for its are the following: a piece of perf board with copper lines or dotsI personally prefer dots though since you can create more complex layouts on a smaller areathe THT components according to the schematic of the circuitsWhich you can always recognize by the long leads which according to the name of this technologypush through the holes of the perf board and are soldered in place on the other side andlast but not least a soldering iron or even better a Soldering Station with a Screwdriver Tip or aConical tip as well asobviously a bit of SolderI recommend using solder with a flux coreSince it removes the oxide coating of the metals and thus creates a strong bond and a shiny surfacewhile flux free solder is certainly a bit harder to work withSince we got everything ready for solderingCan turn on the soldering station heat up the iron to350 degrees Celsius and position the heart of the circuit, the ATiny85 in the middle of the perf boardThe package the IC uses is called "DIP8"Which stands for Dual In-Line Package and the eight represents the number of pinsThis DIP package is pretty popular with THT and only distinguishes itselfthrough the numbers of pins used, but the soldering technique always stays the sameFirst off we have to bend two pins on the copper sides so that the IC is stays in placeThen we bring our iron close to one pin, heat it up as well as the copper pads for one secondAnd immediately bring in the solder from the sides so that the flows around the pin before we move the Soldering IronAfter cooling down the solder joint should have a shiny surfaceWhich means we can continue by utilizing the same technique to solder the rest of the pins to the perf boardOne thing that we miss though is the fact that you usually do not directly solder IC's to a perf boardIt is actually recommended to use sockets so that you can replace the IC in case it blows upSo to remove the IC from the perf boardI like to use so-called solder wick which is basically copper wire coated with fluxTo use it we simply lay it on top of a solder jointApply pressure with the hot soldering iron and wait until we see the flux come outWhich means that the solder wick sucked up the solderThis way we can easily remove the IC and replace it with the socket which we solder in place the same way as the ICNow the rest of the components all follow the same soldering schemeWhich is push the leads through the holes, bend them on the other side, quickly heat up one leads and the copper a round it,bring in the solder and let it reflow for a second before letting it all cool downAnd once enough components are in place, we can use simple solder lines or jumper wires to connect them to one anotherthen we can repeat the process by soldering in more components and then connecting them until the circuit is complete andif you think that this sounds rather simpleThen you are absolutely correct because it only takes a bit of practice and patience to master the art of THTSo now that our through-hole boost circuit is finally complete, we can have a look at a boost converterWhich except for its potentiometer only consists of SMD components.SMD is stands for surface mount device, which means there are no leads which pass through the circuit boardInstead the components are directly soldered onto the surface of the PCBThat means the process of placing the components on the PCB and soldering them can be completely handled by a machineanother advantage of them is their very small size, which is mandatory for circuits that need to fit in your pocket andIf we have a look at this Li-Po charge protect boost PCB that I created we can discover the last advantageThese circuits consists of four different ICS, which if we look at the data sheets only exists as an SMD packageThat means if you want to use the newest IC technologyYou should get familiar with SMD or get out. It's as simple as thatso let's bring in the components for my circuit, and let's get started soldering IAlways like to start with the Schottky diodes and the inductorSince the solder pads are located underneath them so that traditional soldering is pretty hard to doInstead we can use so-called solder pasteBy firstly securing the PCB to the work place we can squirt a tiny bit of the solder paste onto the solder padsPush the components in place would be tweezer and then grab our hot air stationby selecting a temperature of 300 degrees Celsius andmedium wind speed we can heat up the solder paste until it turns liquid andThen into the usual solder which pretty much automatically sticks to the component and solder pads and locks it all in placeNow of course you could use the solar paste / Hot air techniqueto solder all the components to the PCB and the results would even look better than with a normal soldering ironBut I still do not favor this method.The reason is that you can more easily overheat the components in my case. I destroyed my boost converterIC which I had to replace before the board could function correctlySo let's use the soldering iron instead whose screwdriver tip I replaced with a very fine conical tipWhen it comes to SMD components with two terminals like resistors, capacitors and LEDswe firstly tin one solder pad, move the component to the pad with a tweezer andReflow the solder so that the component gets securedThen solder the other side in place and add a bit more solder to the side we started withAfterwards we can repeat this process for all the other two pin componentsOnce again the practice is everything and as you can see I do not have the steadiest handsBut even like this it is no problem to solder SMDFor further resistance you can even use a microscope like I do right hereWhich makes soldering a lot easier, but even without itI successfully soldered a complete board which afterwards functioned without a problemNext we got the SMD ICS, which I talked about earlier.My technique is to tin one solder pad,position the IC with tweezers while utilizing this pad to lock the IC in position andthen simply solder the rest of the pins in place just like we did with the through-hole IC ofCourse the smaller your IC gets, the more difficult it becomes to solder all pins properlyBut once again the technique stays the same it only takes a bit of practiceLast but not least I sold out the microUSB port and the switch in position and our SMD circuit was completeBut we have not faced one of the more popular SMD packages yet: the TQFPAka Thin Quad Flat PackageYour Arduino Pro Mini or Arduino Nano for example consists of one of themTo solder them you must firstly align them with a diagram on the PCB youThen solder one pin in place and get the IC in position just like we discussed it earlierAfterwards we can solder one pin on each side to the PCBAt this point we should get ourselves a flux penWhich we can utilize to flood all the pins of the IC in some additional fluxthen we add a ton of solder to all the pins so that they are basically all bridged on the corresponding sides andfinally we can use solder wick to remove the excess solder andafterwards utilize the cotton pads with some isopropanol to get rid of all the excess solder material on the PCB andJust like that you can easily solder an ATMega328P microcontroller to your PCB without creating any shortsNow the last SMD package we want to have a look at also comes in the form of anESP8266IC which are removed from its breakout boards with hot air asYou can see it has no leads only contact points on the bottom sideThat is why this package is called QFN aka Quad Flat No Leads, butSurprisingly soldering it to PCB is pretty much the same process as before but the TQFPThe only difference is that you cannot easily see your sother your solder connections were successful or notIn my case I did a pretty horrible job right herebut anyway with that being said you are now ready to solder all kinds of through-hole and surface mount components andif you want to use the same tools / materialsas me, then you can check out the video descriptionwell listed all of them asAlways, I hope you enjoyed watching this video if so don't forget to Like share and subscribeStay creative, and I will see you next timeGod damn you all did an awful job at even attempting to translate this