Tinkering with Electronics: Part One
Tinkering with the mighty solder iron!
Until this point, my experience with soldering has been with
- the ocassional solder/desolder on boards to replace component ICs, rig up small circuits, corrective connections on PCBs
- a badly soldered joint in a quick attempt to get stuff working
- fixing broken consumer electronics
Good soldering is an art and a life-saver when running short of time on a project. It takes a while to know the tools and lots of experimentation to develop the knack of doing it well to be able to get those well soldered joints or components on a PCB. As someone who constantly works with HDL and the simulation side of hardware, I naturally found this very exciting.
While I was looking for a way to practice this with a variety of components and make something functional out of it at the same time, I came across DIY kits being sold online by vendors from Shenzhen. I went ahead and ordered some of these kits that I put together in a series of small projects. Some of these would be handy desk tools for my experiments at the end of it.
The plan was to start with THT*, then move to SMD* and eventually figure out the right tools.
*Since I was new to this, there was terminology to be aware of: Soldering can be of two types based on the nature of components being used. Both of these have their merits and de-merits but SMT is advanced and harder to get right for beginners.
- Through Hole Technology — Deals with discrete components. Most circuits I had put together from scratch.
- Surface Mount Technology — Deals with SMD components. Usually seen on PCBs after the BOM has been finalized. This is trickier and requires better tools. A good comparison between these two.
Part One: The Function Generator
Started to put together the XR2206 based Function Signal Generator that produces Sine Triangle Square outputs upto 1MHz using a basic Stanley 30W soldering iron
Started off with components that lie closest to the PCB first
Trying to get the right amount of solder flow
Leads removed from discrete component using a side cutting plier
The result!
Time to put it to test. Used a generic 8ch USB Logic Analyzer that I got in the same order (found this useful resource on switching between USBee (for Pulseview) and Saleae firmware)
Pardon the careless soldering on the wire end of this 1Hz-150Khz 3.3V-30V Signal Generator PWM Pulse Frequency with variable duty cycle to experiment with the the logic analyser
This turned out to be a good soldering experience involving different types of components. Learnt a lot in this process from package types to soldering techniques and recommend exploring this to anyone who wants to get started with soldering from scratch.
