Hi i was wondering if anyone knew whats a soldering iron station or soldering iron in general for soldering A BEC to basically any + and - wires in my build , also what type of wire would i need to use is there anything i need to avoid or look out for anything would help thank you! the soldering iron/station is probably only going to be use for this one time thing so please no really expensive soldering irons.
Welcome to the forum! Searching “soldering iron” will give you quite a few good topics to read. Having said that:
Soldering is an art and it takes a decent amount of practice to do it well (at least enough to actually be comfortable relying on it on our rocket boards). In my opinion, if you’ve never soldered before and are looking at buying a soldering for a one time use, which sounds to me like you’re not really planning on really learning it well, find a friend who has and knows how to use one.
All I’m saying is spending not much and just using it once, you’ll be unhappy with the results.
I suggest some of the Youtube tutorials - watch some folks and see how they do it. Even with a poor quality iron - skill/art of soldering makes a HUGE difference.
And to your question on wires and BEC - what guage wire? heavier wire needs a hotter iron - the wire acts as a heatsink sucking heat away from your solder, so the bigger the wire - the more it tries to pull the heat down the wire - so you need a hotter iron to do it quickly.
A good soldering station is a fantastic investment to DIY and esk8. ability to make custom length cables and adapters as needed! I just made a few extra Serial and Parallel plugs for my brother’s build and besides the ease and immediate satisfaction of making it - each adapter is usually $5-10 online - so it doesn’t take long to save the $ to pay for the soldering station. Add in hot-air and you’ll use it for heatshrink and eventually have it for SMD repair if you need to.
All of that aside - as @rpn314 says - if you need it for one wire - have a buddy help. If you want to learn how to solder - I’d start watching some tutorial videos.
HTH - GL!
I think I could have worded mine better. Sorry @Exiledd_Top, today was a little stressful. @sl33py summed it up perfectly
This is the one I use and it’s been great. Quite a bit cheaper than when I got it too! ($90 when I bought it)
yeah i just order one it looks okay for the price and i better start on the youtube vidoes on learning to solder And for guage wire i went with https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00068IJOU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
thank you for the advise and about the attitude from @rpn314 its okay my mistake i did look it up but none said what wire type
i will make a topic on my full build when all my parts come cant wait !
I think I bought that same solder roll. I didn’t like it as much as my other solder because it’s quite thin.
i bought for the reason it has flux already in the wire to lazy to get flux
Any rosin-core solder already has flux in it (the rosin). Thicker solder as well
I like this one a lot
well i already ordered the other wire next time when i run out ill look into it if i ever run out lol i might as well solder the xt90 connectors if i am going to solder instead of buying adapters
Agree. I have the .03, but it’s too thin. I think that’s what i had last roll and didn’t know better (last a long ass time).
When i got a new roll i ordered one that was prime (so available faster) after i saw the .03 was going to be a few weeks… got the .05 as a result. This is much better and i think it’ll be my go-to from now on.
The roll i got seem circa 1960, but works fine:
Aged to perfection
Alright guys - back me up here… Flux. Shit is magic in a sticky ass, messy, tub… I have some no clean that works OK… but OMG it makes soldering big wires easier!!! 10awg XT90’s - BAM - no cold solder - sucks in the solder and solid every single time!.
Messy and sticky gel works great - just getting low and using some Kingbo no-clean paste which seems to work fine too.
I like getting the solder with the flux core, but I would second @sl33py’s recommendation: get some standalone flux as well, it really does work magic