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Soldering Session:

With the winter months coming quickly, you might be looking for some fun projects to help pass the time and keep yourself from just parking in front of the television. Soldering and electronics can be an awesome choice, and will help sharpen a skill set that may serve you well professionally in the future somewhere. Even if you never plan to do anything with component level electronics in your career, having a basic understanding can make your skills in operating, maintaining, evaluating, and recommending equipment you do use far more objective.

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Learn more Electronics & Soldering

In this video, we take a cheap kit from eBay and assemble it to see what happens. These can be found individually or in lots, most coming from the Shenzhen markets in China, and usually for only a dollar or two each shipped. As they are imported, there is typically not much in the way of English labeling in the instructions or packaging. By the time I get around to grabbing one to assemble, I never remember exactly what it is supposed to be & that makes building it all the more fun.

It’s a great practice to follow the diagrams, examine the components as you assemble and try to figure out what each does as you add it to the circuit. Sometimes you get it right & sometimes there’s a fun surprise for your effort. If you’ve never assembled anything electronic before, that’s okay too. In future videos we’ll do more of this, and if you follow along, I think you’ll have a blast. Making a pile of confusing looking parts come to life with a little bit of time, patience and effort is hugely satisfying, even when the result is as simple as a single blinking light.

If you come from an audio background, practicing component level electronics will greatly help your understanding of signal flow. Interconnecting audio gear will make more sense and your ability to get the most out of the technology you currently have will be improved as you understand it better at a finer level.

Thanks to Hakko for supporting the channel by supplying the soldering tools you see being used in this video. I’ve been a huge fan of their irons for years & am happy to recommend them to anyone at any skill level. I’d recommend the FX888D if you’re looking for a good general duty iron that will last you a lifetime. I know plenty of folks using their irons from 20+ years ago and they still work fine and even more importantly, replacement tips are still readily available.

If you’ve got any questions, comments, or thoughts to share, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.