Saturday, June 13, 2009

Soldering

It’s been 15 years since I soldered in anger – and that was a 2 week placement for work experience in a company that fabricated circuit boards for some product that I no longer recall.

So I sat down tonight to do a couple of bits.  Disaster is a bit strong because the house is still standing and I didn’t burn myself but just rubbish results.  In the intervening period I’ve clearly lost all the skills that I ever had, and in my fuzzy recollection of those days, I was a virtuoso with an iron.

My iron was very very cheap in the first place.  A week or so ago, I left it on for hours by mistake and I think that may have degraded the tip.  The point just doesn’t seem to be able to conduct enough heat and it may also be a bit grubby.

I’m scoping out a better iron figuring that it will last for years (I’m a believer in the saying ‘he who buys cheap, buys twice’ but I didn’t want to spent 80-120UKP not knowing that I’d even get as far as trying to use it.  Ah well.

Anyway, I found this on youtube.  Excellent description and clear do’s / don’ts of the whole process.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Dusty Ledfield

I got a good deal (I think) on some bright 10mm LED’s (130k mcd’s) but they’re clear rather than diffuse and they look weird behind the ping pong balls I was planning to house them in.

Sanding one or two down with some 240 grit sandpaper works just fine but it’s frightfully slow.

So, never adverse to buying a gadget (economic stimulus is my excuse) I unleash the Dremel 300, delivered today, on them. 

It works great.  In fact, almost too well.  I wish the device had a lower ‘lowest’ speed.  I really ought to be wearing a dust mask too!

But all said and done, I reckon it will save 2 minutes per LED.  So 64 x 2 minutes, the best part of 2 hours.  At my professional rate, that’s already paid for the Dremel a bunch of times over.  Result, me=happy (apart from polywhatsit-dust in my respiratory tract)

Clear vs. Dremel from Simon Devlin on Vimeo.