Mechanical Pencil Solder Feeder Hack

July 29, 2023 by Chris Lott 29 Comments

Want a better way to feed solder, but want to do it on the quick and cheap? Well [ptkrf] has a solution for you in an old instructables post we stumbled upon recently. You might have, or can inexpensively buy, a mechanical pencil which has the feeder button on the side rather than on top, as usual. With the pencil in hand, [ptkrf] shows you the simple procedure for modifying the pencil into a solder feeder. You might need to experiment with different size pencils and solders to get a perfect match. Common mechanical pencils come in sizes to accommodate 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9 mm leads, but there are bigger and smaller ones available. Perhaps one of those really large drafting lead holders could be repurposed as a solder dispenser for the bigger jobs.

We discussed a 3D printed solder feeder a few days ago, but if you don’t have one, this may be a good way to go. Thanks to [iliis] for sending in this tip.

A Simple One-Handed Solder Feeder

July 27, 2023 by Lewin Day 46 Comments

Soldering can get frustrating when you’re working fast. It often feels like you don’t have enough hands, particularly on jobs where you need to keep feeding solder in a hurry. To solve that issue, [mulcmu] developed a simple one-handed solder feeder.

The solder is fed out of the tip by simply dragging it with the thumb.

The intended use-case is for busy work like soldering long pin headers. The one-handed device allows solder to be continually fed while the other hand uses the soldering iron. It solves a long-running problem for [mulcmu], after their experiments with techniques inspired by TIG welding came to nought.

The design uses a pen-like form factor. A 3D-printed hollow tube has a wire ferrule inserted in the end, which serves as the tip of the device through which solder is fed. The tube has a cutaway, which allows the user to feed solder through using an easy motion of the thumb. The solder itself is fed from a spool in a regular bench top holder. If more slack is required in the solder feed, one simply pins the solder down in the device and tugs to draw more out.

If you find yourself regularly soldering repetitive jobs by hand, this could be a gamechanger for you. Those working in through-hole would be perhaps best served by this device. Meanwhile, if you’ve got nifty tool hacks of your own to share, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Portable Soldering Station Runs On Drill Batteries

June 22, 2023 by Lewin Day 37 Comments

Power tool batteries are a convenient portable power supply for all manner of different things. [Zachary Goode] noticed that Ryobi was using them to power soldering irons, but no such tool existed in the DeWalt range. Thus, he set about to build such a rig himself.

The build relies on a simple 3D-printed adapter to suck power from a DeWalt drill battery. It’s a little piece of plastic with spade terminals inserted to act as the contacts. Armed with this tool, [Zachary] included it as part of a simple compact portable soldering iron design that relies on the off-the-shelf T12-952 controller board. This allows him to use the rig with a wide variety of common soldering iron handpieces, like his favored Hakko FX-951. The design also features a lithium-ion battery protection circuit of [Zachary]’s own design, to make up for the fact that DeWalt don’t integrate them into their battery packs.

The high power density of lithium rechargeable batteries has led to a proliferation of portable soldering irons in recent years. Some are even completely handheld, with no external wires or power supplies to speak of. If you’ve been whipping up your own gear to solder on the go, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!

LED Matrix Displays Get New Look Thanks To SMD Stencils

April 28, 2023 by Dan Maloney 26 Comments

Even if surface-mount skills aren’t in your repertoire, chances are pretty good that most of us are at least familiar with SMD stencils. These paper-thin laser-cut steel sheets are a handy way to apply a schmear of solder paste to the pads of a PCB before component placement and reflowing. But are stencils good for anything else?

It turns out they are, if you’ve got some plain old 8×8 LED matrix displays you want to jazz up a bit. In this case, [upir]’s displays were of the square pixel type, but this trick would work just as well for a matrix with circular elements. Most of the video below is a master class in Adobe Illustrator, which [upir] used to generate the artwork for his stencils. There are a lot of great tips here that make creating one simple shape and copying it over the whole array with the proper spacing a lot easier. He also details panelizing multiple stencils, as well as the workflow from Illustrator to manufacturing.

When lined up properly over the face of the LED matrix, the stencils have quite an effect. We really liked the narrow vertical bars, which make the LED display look a bit like a VFD. And just because [upir] chose to use the same simple shape over all the LEDs in a matrix doesn’t mean that there aren’t other options. We can see how you might use the same technique to create different icons or even alphanumeric characters to create custom LED displays. The possibilities are pretty much limited to your imagination.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen [upir] teaching old displays new tricks.

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Finessing A Soldering Iron To Remove Large Connectors

March 17, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 32 Comments

One of the first tools that is added to a toolbox when working on electronics, perhaps besides a multimeter, is a soldering iron. From there, soldering tools can be added as needed such as a hot air gun, reflow oven, soldering gun, or desoldering pump. But often a soldering iron is all that’s needed even for some specialized tasks as [Mr SolderFix] demonstrates.

This specific technique involves removing a large connector from a PCB. Typically either a heat gun would be used, which might damage the PCB, or a tedious process involving a desoldering tool or braided wick might be tried. But with just a soldering iron, a few pieces of wire can be soldered around each of the pins to create a massive solder blob which connects all the pins of the connector to this wire. With everything connected to solder and wire, the soldering iron is simply pressed into this amalgamation and the connector will fall right out of the board, and the wire can simply be dropped away from the PCB along with most of the solder.

There is some cleanup work to do afterwards, especially removing excess solder in the holes in the PCB, but it’s nothing a little wick and effort can’t take care of. Compared to other methods which might require specialized tools or a lot more time, this is quite the technique to add to one’s soldering repertoire. For some more advanced desoldering techniques, take a look at this method for saving PCBs from some thermal stresses.

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Top left of image shows a picture of a purplish-grey sea cucumber. Above the cucumber is the word "bio-inspiration." Arrows come from the cucumber to anthropomorphized cartoons of it saying "rigid" at the top with a cartoon sea cucumber standing straight up with spikes and the arrow captioned "soft" pointing down showing a crawling sea cucumber that looks more like a slug. To the right of the cucumber images is a set of three images stacked top to bottom. The top image is of a silver sphere with a zoomed-in atomic diagram with aligned magnetic poles next to it saying "solid state." The middle image shows arrows going up and down next to a snowflake and an artistic rendering of magnetic fields labeled "transition." The bottom image of this section shows a reddish sphere next to a zoomed-in atomic diagram where the magnetic poles are not aligned labeled "liquid state."

Phase Change Materials For Flexible And Strong Robots

February 19, 2023 by Navarre Bartz 21 Comments

Shape shifters have long been the stuff of speculative fiction, but researchers in China have developed a magnetoactive phase transitional matter (MPTM) that makes Odo slipping through an air vent that much more believable.

Soft robots can squeeze into small spaces or change shape as needed, but many of these systems aren’t as strong as their more mechanically rigid siblings. Inspired by the sea cucumber’s ability to manipulate its rigidity, this new MPTM can be inductively heated to a molten state to change shape as well as encapsulate or release materials. The neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) microparticles suspended in gallium will then return to solid form once cooled.

Applications in drug delivery, foreign object removal, and smart soldering (video after the break) probably have more real world impact than the LEGO minifig T1000 impersonation, despite how cool that looks. While a pick-and-place can do better soldering work on a factory line, there might be repair situations where a magnetically-controlled solder system could come in handy.

We’ve seen earlier work with liquid robots using gallium and bio-electronic hybrids also portending the squishy future of robotics.

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PCB Hotplate Has Integrated Heating Element Traces

November 16, 2022 by Lewin Day 13 Comments

Normally when we talk about PCBs and hotplates, we’re talking about reflowing solder. In this build from [Arnov Sharma], though, the PCB itself is the hotplate!

The idea was to create a compact hotplate for easily reflowing small PCBs. To achieve that, [Arnov] designed a board with a thick coil trace that acts as a heating element. The full coil trace has a resistance of 1.9 ohms, and passing electricity through it generates plenty of heat. Running off a 12 volt supply, the mini hotplate is capable of reaching a maximum temperature of 214°C. Higher voltages can push that figure higher.

The board is intended to self-regulate, with an ATtiny13 onboard and a thermistor to measure temperature. However, in the initial design, this feature didn’t quite work properly. Version 2 is intended to include a better temperature sensor and a OLED screen for displaying the current temperature to the user.

We’ve seen other tiny hotplate builds before, too. They’re great for smaller projects and for hacking on the go! Video after the break.

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