Soldering Alternatives

[Jdansti]

In addition to what RG said, here's a very good video on how to solder properly.

[Cozybuilder]

If you intend to do more than the smallest, crudest electronics, spend some time just learning to solder. Clean the joints and parts to be joined, flux them, and get in quick with high heat and *little* solder, then get out fast so that the heat doesn't have time to travel up from the actual joint and cook other things. Get some throwaway parts, even as little as bits of wire or resistor leads you've saved, and go practice on something you can't mess up, until you develop the skills.

I know this presents a problem if you are impatient, but believe me, you will save hundreds of times as much time later by NOT messing up the soldering you do when it matters. Don't learn on something you can't throw away. Consider the materials you "waste" learning to be the equivalent of paying for textbooks and pencils. And consider: if you make your early mistakes on stuff you can quietly throw away when nobody is looking, you won't waste the expensive stuff you do later. It's a whole lot like practicing on guitar. Make your mistakes, and lots of them, in private. When it gets easy, then get on stage.

There are a few ways that I have used that seem to work well.

If you happen to be using double-sided PCB with plated-through holes, there will be pads on both top and bottom. Suspend the board above your table, propping it up with a couple of bits of 2x4 lumber cutoffs or a pile of books, or something to hold it up so you can stick leads through without clipping them off first. Then when you have a batch of components in the proper locations, check to see you got them in the right places, then - carefully - solder one lead per component from the top. Solder is not glue, but it works well enough for this micro-glue case. Once you're done, you can flip the board over and solder them all.

Then there's real glues. Why not stick a dot of sticky goo right under where the component body goes when you insert it into the holes? A lot of PCBs were manufactured this way back in the bad old through-hole days. Any goop that's sticky, won't run to liquid under heat, and is not conductive will do. You only need a dot, maybe the amount transferred from the wetted tip of a toothpick, to hold a resistor while you flip the board and solder it. Superglue works, but it's usually too strong later. And messy. The older celluloid glues are great for this. As is a clear stuff I've seen called "museum glue" and the stuff you put on walls to hold up posters. Pine tree sap is great for it too.

Another way is to build from the surface of the PCB outwards. Put all of the shortest parts - small resistors and diodes - flat on the board first, then put a bit of foam or cardboard over them, hold the cover/parts/PCB sandwich together and flip it over, sliding it onto the table with the leads sticking up. Now gravity is holding the PCB down on the parts and you can solder in a skillful manner.  Then put on the batch of the next-highest parts. The ones you've soldered on will stay put.

IMHO, there are no suitable alternatives for what you've described. There are difficult, clumsy, and expensive ways around solder, but that's not where you're headed. Buy some parts to learn to solder on, make your mistakes and burned fingers on the learning exercises/parts, then throw them away. Don't start off learning to solder on something you have to make work - and ought to be proud of when you get done.

Not what you wanted to hear, I know, but I think it's good advice.

Second the above, except maybe call it great advice   

[Rixen]

..and for the really impatient..

I shudder to think whats going to happen to that pile of slag... or if someone walked past and bumped his elbow...

[greaser_au]

^^ these videos make me shudder...  and I have done stuff like this for a living in a factory. Without even watching most of the video I can see this is a disaster waiting to happen...

These people have no sense of their own fallability or the propensity of others to be in the right place at the wrong time...

david

[aron]

Those wire wrap projects - just simply amazing!!!!!! I've seen prototypes of boards and I can't believe they nailed the hundreds of connections.

[Rixen]

..certainly the spectrum analyser board would have been done on an automated machine being a production instrument. I find it harder to believe all the convolution maths etc for the FFT being done in TTL logic..

here's one on ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nicolet-Scientific-Corporation-440B-Mini-Ubiquitous-Spectrum-Analyzer-Rack-5D/120984540567?_trksid=p2047675.c100011.m1850&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D36539%26meid%3D3f166f78c959401c94505d90370823b3%26pid%3D100011%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D1%26sd%3D331818952415

[R.G.]

Those wire wrap projects - just simply amazing!!!!!! I've seen prototypes of boards and I can't believe they nailed the hundreds of connections.

It can get far, far worse. I worked at Three Initial Corporation back when "logic" meant "TTL ICs". Computer logic simulators were not large and sufficient enough to design whole computers, so digital prototypes were made. They were often set up as a number of "gates", a gate being a roughly 3' by 4' aluminum frame holding a number of roughly 12" x 16" boards. Each board was brick-walled solid with wire wrap sockets. The panels and gates were CNC wire-wrapped, and came back with the backs covered solid with one color wire-wrap wire. Often this was black or blue. The hundreds and thousands of TTL ICs were inserted, then came the task of trying it out and fixing the odd little mistake that might have crept in.

When a mistake was found, the original wire wrap wires were un-wrapped, and new wires added to make the fix. To help in debugging, the correction wires were a different color, usually yellow.

At first.

I have seen gates originally done all black turn mostly yellow, then part red and green. There were often half a dozen gates in serious prototypes.

[greaser_au]

Those wire wrap projects - just simply amazing!!!!!! I've seen prototypes of boards and I can't believe they nailed the hundreds of connections.

In smaller production runs of things like S100 system backplanes, the factory I worked in used a 'computer assisted' hand process. The card frame under construction was loaded with special sensor cards and the program loaded. The operator would use an automagic strip/wrap/cut gun.  The system would  tell them where to put a wire end, and beep to confirm when the gun was placed correctly.

david