Fastest way to solder 12 pin headers 100 times

Thread Starter

DuzMontana

Joined Mar 25, 2015
24
I though I'd report back since anyways my back is not allowing me to move very far from the computer...

Due to me being cheap, I did not buy new fancy toys to do it...

It holds the wires in alignment with the header. You might also consider using a hot-air gun and spring clip to strip the wires evenly. Described in post #9 here:
http://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/how-would-i-strip-ribbon-cable.147010/#post-1248668
I did a variation of this cloth pin, I had a little metal clip that I used to hold the connector and by some kind of magic, the weight balanced the connector straight... Not sure why this anti-Murphy event happened to be but I'll take it. Soldered pin 1 using that clip then removed it.

If you use a good water soluble flux, you can float solder with a broad tip on your soldering Iron. You'll want a good soldering station, you can get a good thermostatically controlled one around $89 here in the U.S.

The principle is to float a bubble of solder from the tip to header pin in a straight line and the excess will stay on or near the tip of the Iron and only what you need is left behind.
I learned that I have a bad quality IPA soluble flux which would make a bee colony feel at home... I fluxed the pins and tried this method which ended up working fine but made a total mess because of the shameful abuse of flux... It was most probably the fasted thing I tried but, I was not good enough with it and ended up doing a lot of rework which led to losing time overall.

In the time spent on this post you would have hand soldered them all by now.. :p
Yeah... well... you won this round against fancy toys mcgyvr, I did bite the bullet and soldered that in 5 hours straight which is way less than I thought it might take... I only did the 12 pin though, still have to do the 6 pins and the modules...

I need a back transplant now...
 
Top