From the course: Learning Soldering for Electronics

What you need to know about soldering electronics

From the course: Learning Soldering for Electronics

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What you need to know about soldering electronics

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- The first thing that we should do is really talk about what is soldering. There's all different ways of connecting materials, whether it be solder, or glue, or ultrasonic welding. We're talking about electronic soldering. And electronic soldering typically uses a soldering iron, a source of heat, and a dissimilar material, typically lead or silver. And it's a lower temperature connection than other types of soldering. The important thing to understand is that it's an electronic and a mechanical connection. If you keep in mind that it's a mechanical connection, your soldering will be much better. Typically, you think, oh, well, the electrons can flow through there. It'll be fine. But, if it's not a good mechanical connection, it's going to fail. Other types of soldering might be like the plumber around your house. They use a propane torch or a MAPP gas to connect copper pipes, and that's a lead-free solder, although you never want to use that type of solder with electronics, but it's another type of soldering. You also have jewelers and silversmiths, and metalsmiths that use high temperature or silver solder to make connections between, typically, silver, gold, copper, nickel. Even steel, whatever it might be. And they're all dissimilar materials. That's the key. And then there's welding. And welding is different because typically, welding uses the same material. So if you're connecting two pieces of aluminum together, you would use aluminum as a filler, and whether you're using electricity or gas to heat that joint and melt that similar material, the end result is a connection that is the same as the two pieces being connected. So, if you have steel being connected to another piece of steel, and you use steel, that connection is just as strong as the original pieces of steel. That's not the same case with silver soldering for jewelers and electronics. It's a dissimilar metal, a different type of metal. And that connection is going to be weaker, typically, than the two materials being connected. That doesn't mean it's weak, though. And I'll teach you how to make good, strong electrical and mechanical connections in this video series.

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