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What’s something you own that has truly paid for itself? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 week ago by Davy_Jones@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I’m curious, what’s an item, tool, or purchase you own that you feel has completely justified its cost over time? Could be anything from a gadget to a piece of furniture or even software. What made it worth it for you?

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[–] pishadoot@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Can you post a gear list? I got an iron a while ago and some crappy Amazon sucker tubes but I really think I'm missing some stuff because I'm either missing stuff or using crappy solder. I like to try and just take components off boards for practice but even that is a huge struggle. I've fixed a couple things but it's rough work for sure.

I know it's probably a skill issue, but I think some other tools might make certain things a bit easier as well, but without someone I know to ask questions I don't want to just buy some random stuff.

[–] MutilationWave@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago

Heat the metal, heat the PCB a little bit, then solder. I'm terrible at soldering and my friend just taught me that trick.

[–] lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Can you post a gear list?

Hotair / Soldering station: Aoyue Int 986A
Solder Sucker: Aoyue Int474A++
Preheater: Aoyue Int853A Pro
Solder: Sn62Pb36Ag2 (lowest melting point, hard to get because of regulations, but available on the Praud store from Poland for example)
Flux: Kingbo RMA-218 (available on Aliexpress, the variant in syringes is very easy to apply)
Convenience:
- a brass wool sponge for removing the solder from the tip
- a very long and thin drill bit if too much solder ever gets stuck inside the solder sucker (cleaning one of those out is a bitch)
- tweezers

Have a lot of fun! Soldering get's really easy if you have the right gear. Swapping out the crappy amazon solder with the good stuff from Praud made the biggest difference, imho. You can already solder a lot of stuff with a 30W soldering iron from the hobby store, but flux and solder are what's really important.

There's a lot of really cheap solder on amazon with way too high melting points. Sometimes the sellers just lie on their datasheet, I once fell for CFH fake solder which barely melted, even when I had my iron on overdrive. It wasn't me, it was the crappy and fake product!

[–] pishadoot@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago

Thank you so much!

I have a Weller WLC 40w, I did a good bit of reading before I bought it but I might have missed the mark. I got a brass sponge that I stuck in an old metal canister, and some of those crappy plastic unpowered vacuum suckers off Amazon.

I did buy my solder on Amazon, I wonder if that's been an issue. It's this: Kester 24-6337-0010 44 Rosin Core Solder 63/37, and I don't use flux with it.

The solder you have, is it regulated because of lead content? I can go buy a hunk of pure lead without question so it's weird to me if that's the case.