hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3235.txt

Episode: 3235
Title: HPR3235: Soldering Tips
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3235/hpr3235.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 19:17:41

---

This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,235 for Friday 25 December 2020. Today's show is entitled
Soldering Tips and is part of the series, Hobby Electronics. It is the 60th show of operator,
and is about 8 minutes long, and carries an explicit flag. The summary is
what little I know about the topic you will learn. This episode of HPR is brought to you by
An Honesthost.com. Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15,
that's HPR15. Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com.
Although one of the two others said that HPR15 is going to be pretty short. I'm actually
getting ready to go do a walk, but I just wanted to go over some stuff as far as
repairing small electronics and toys, clearly toys. I'm not an electronic person by any
means, especially the imagination. I did one similar to this about setup and
going over a nixie tube clock. If you just look for nixie tube, I think I went over
that or soldering or home electronics or whatever. This is kind of like an
offended slash update. I'm not going to talk about the gear. I'm just going to say in
general you want the non-led free solder. You want a good solder wick. You want some
good patch wire, like some old wire laying around, so keep some land wire and
keep some small electronics wire that you trust. But mainly you want to get some
contact cleaner for a lot of these because I'm fixing them in an awfully game,
which didn't work as what? Somebody left the batteries in. There's two Halloween
toys or noise maker things that don't work. Try to guess why? Those don't work,
because the batteries got left in them over the year and they sat in the attic,
it was 180 degrees up there or 130 degrees up there. Guess what happened to the
batteries? They exploded. The biggest thing I can tell you is any electronics that
says made in China on it or it's mostly plastic, do not leave the batteries in it,
because they just explode. Anything that takes offline batteries, don't leave the
batteries in it if you care about it. Now I'll say that. I say that about stuff,
but I think it has to do with the quality of the electronics and I'm not going to
tend to understand how this all works. But I have a light saber, Star Wars
FX light saber, one of the first generation worms that I've had for
10, 15, I don't even know how many years I've had it now. That thing was $100
when it came out. That seems expensive for a white-up toy.
What it is is a quality piece of electronics. Now it is mostly,
the insides are all plastic, but the outside has got metal and the
hill's metal and everything else is nice and whatever. But that's the quality
piece of electronics and I have yet to need to lead the batteries out of that
light saber. So it has to do with the quality of the electronics and then
how and why it is not the battery. I mean I'm sure some of it has to do with the battery
and the usage of the item. So if it just sits there dead for a long period
time in a cold or hot place, yeah, that's probably more likely. But I mean
there's times I we don't push the light saber for six months to a year
or whatever. So like I don't understand why some stuff
crashed out and some stuff doesn't. But anyways, like this little thing has
a light switch on it or has a switch on it that was off, I'm sure.
Inside of the monopoly box for a thousand years and never got used,
but even though the light, the switch was off because of the batteries weren't
being used and they exploded. The same for all the Halloween stuff.
That was just a year and we had that stuff out just just less than a year ago.
So I don't understand why it's already creeping out. So you want like a
voltmeter to check along the path of power to make sure you're getting
power to the device. This one had lots of crews in on it and I thought I had
cleaned it, but it still wasn't clean. The whole thing apart
and one of the leads had fallen off. So a lot of it has to do with power.
The thing's not getting power. The thing's not getting power. The thing's not getting power.
Very rarely have I taken anything apart. And it's been something not
power now. I had like a Wii, Nintendo Wii remote that it actually
got cut. Like something happened, you know, the batteries started leaking.
Something happened, something short happened somewhere on the board.
And the thing wouldn't, it wouldn't turn on.
It wouldn't connect to anything. You're seeing here, you know,
there's a lot of the things that face here.
Just some emotion plus pieces of the character.
So let's just kind of climb short of it.
I did discover this stuff with the tape.
If you ever had rubber cement.
Like rubber cement?
But it's more of a liquid electric tape.
That's really good to use on terminals.
Which I should have put on this little plastic piece of junk that the terminal's a lot.
If you're into the terminals falling off or something, you know,
crappy wiring or whatever.
You can substitute that with just like looner all down with,
looner all down with epoxy or not with epoxy.
But the electric tape we're using like a,
using like a glue gun that will help with that.
I actually forgot to protect my soldering iron here.
So I'm going to heat it back up so that I can put a bunch of solder on there to store it.
Oh wow.
I pull this thing out every, I would say on average,
every, every, every other month.
I'm not any good at it, but I have learned that if you don't take care of your tips
or you try to take that same piece of sandpaper to them.
I got forbid.
I'm going to bother googling that.
It's not a thing.
You would think you could just, you know, solder the tip.
Now you can't do that with copper, like the garbage copper tips.
You can do that.
But in general, you don't want to solder the tips.
Now this tip I have, I'll say the tip of it is about,
I have one that's sharper.
But the tip of this one is like the tip of a thick,
a thick one of the big paper clips.
The tip of it is about that, that sharp.
But what I, what I realize is that it's not about the sharpness of the tip.
It's the gun, how hot it is.
What the leads are, the pads are on the, what you're soldering,
you know, how hot it is with all the other components around it.
You don't have to do with your success.
It's not about that.
It's not about that, it's not much.
What's the things put together?
The magnet bolt here is required to put all the screws in the magnet bolt
and then you have parts hooked over and you can give it a more focus.
That's pretty much it.
I just wanted to say that, you know, it's not hard to fix these small,
I'm trying to fix them.
I've probably spent an hour fixing this thing,
which is probably about the same time.
It's like, it's a plated one.
What's the price of that?
So I'm basically spending a lot of time,
you know, playing it at this point.
It's been thrown in a way and I'm excited to learn
how to have something work in you.
Something not working.
But anyways, you can also roll it out.
I think this thing is to take a bit of time.
I think it's a timer and something else.
But you can always, you know, you can, with Android and phones now,
you can always substitute.
You can get a die, a simulator, you know.
A bi-unilator or sometimes a frame, whatever emulator.
So you can pretty much emulate any of these old studio electronics
that are a timer or switches or whatever they do.
But at the end of the day, you know,
it's not that hard to fix these things.
It's kind of interesting to wires
and make sure there's continuity from one lead to the next.
And I kind of go over here.
Anyways.
I don't know, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
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