How to do perfect hand soldering?

[prashanth1]

i followed the tutorials still couldn’t get it right. the solder is not strong enough to stick to the pad. even for the small pressure its coming out. i am trying solder a wire through the hole.
Steps I followed are:

1. Burninshing the pads well.
2. Tining solder tip , component and pads.
3. When am tinings the pads the solder is not sticking on to the pads.even it seems like sticking its not strong. As soon as little force is applied its coming out.
4. Solder iron temperature tried at 160 degrees and 180 degrees also.
   Conductive ink am using is deceisive hamster.
   Please can any explain in detail how you guys are able to do it in the video tutorials. It seems easy when I watch it but its not!!! Working for me.

[jazozaya]

Hi @prashanth1,

Are you applying flux to the pads before soldering? This is very important as the provided solder wire does not contain any type of flux inside. (The videos shown at www.voltera.io/handsoldering are a bit outdated and are from when we were using a different type of solder wire that had flux inside)

The V-One ships with a solder spool and flux.

Also - Do you think you could post a picture of the substrate you are trying to print? We’ll be able to tell how well it printed/cured.

[Pyrophreek]

A couple of things I have found helpful:
when burnishing, it doesn’t take a lot of pressure. On some of my early circuits I would try to scrub really hard and I found it would take off too much material and damage traces. This then made it harder when trying to solder to it (you want as smooth a surface as possible). If you have an inspection scope, break off a small piece of the burnishing pad and hold it with tweezers and burnish a pad or two while examining it under the scope, and you will see what I mean.

Flux, Flux, FLUX! I cover my entire circuit in flux right after I burnish it. I use an MGChemicals flux pen for easy no-mess application. Even when solder pasting, I have found the flux can help. Also, pre tin as much as you can before applying it, and at least put more flux on all the pads/wires/contacts.

Temperature: I have found this to be absolutely critical. With the new tin bismuth solder, I set my soldering iron to 210 C. I have found this to be the optimum temperature for my equipment, but you may need to try a few temperatures to find the best on yours. Of note, 205 and 215 DO NOT WORK WELL on mine…so temperature is critical.

Put a blob of solder on your tip, flux the area you want to apply it to, then gently touch it. I have also found sometimes if you gently rub the tip on the surface (GENTLY or you will damage it), it helps it wet better.

Hope this helps.

Edit:
one last thing, just to confirm this is for the Tin Bismuth Silver solder. I use some I got from digikey: Chipquik SMDSWLTLFP32 which is Sn42/Bi57/Ag1, but I believe this is the same alloy that voltera now sells.

[prashanth1]

Thanks guys,

I haven’t used flux initially but it still repels the solder paste not giving enough strength to component to hold. But the thing which worked for me is having metal plating or called Rivets in to the hole.
This is making soldering easy job!