68
Condor
6y

*sees that the high voltage generator kit got delivered today*
Cool, let's build this thing and integrate it into my old bugzapper! Mosquitos beware 😈

*starts building the kit, all is going very well*
Oh wow, isn't it Monday? But it's taking only 15 minutes of soldering and everything goes super smooth.. what divine power is giving me such good luck?

Alright, last thing, the transformer and then this circuit is done!!!

*solders in the transformer without realizing that the wires are coated, and the solder isn't protruding through*
Fuck. Time to desolder this shit and blast the wires with my lighter to flash that coating right off!

*engages solder pump and solder goes off extremely easily, because it only adhered to the pad*
*takes off transformer*
Me: "Nnngh..!!! Get off you piece of junk!!!"
Transformer: "Hmph!! I will stay in here no matter what!"
Me: "Get the fuck off already!!! 😡"
Transformer: *leads break off* "Alright, but these leads stay here!!!"
Me: "MotherFUCKER!!!"

Yep, it's Monday after all.

Comments
  • 6
    Oh boy.
    I love and hate that struggle.
    This happens always to me when I am working on a school Project and we need to desolder everything out, clean the pcb, and work on a new project.
    I had to do that more than 50 times.
    It is cool, when you want to look like you are being productive infront of the teacher lol, and dunno what else to do.
    It is funny to see others struggling with it. And frustruating when it happens to yourself lol
  • 8
    @-ANGRY-CLIENT- luckily the kit was only €2, otherwise I would've been really fucked.. but yeah these thin transformer wires are a royal pain in the lower back to desolder.. fragile as shit 😐

    Well I promptly bought a new one so there's that.. let's see if I still remember that I should flash the coating off the wires in a month or two 🙃

    Btw you actually have to desolder your finished circuits? Why would you do that? I mean prototyping is done in the breadboard and learning how to solder is something that I'd really use throwaway stuff for 🤔 unless there's various classes that use the same material over and over again?
  • 3
    @Condor the teacher is a damn dictator with strict rules who likes to abuse his hierarchical power. (Like most teachers I have met)
    He does not want to buy new materials thus he wants us to desolder the pcbs. When we desolder a pcb unproperly (when some pins got stuck and broke from e.g. a transistor), he yells at us how incompetent we are and to pay the price. It is like engaging in the military instead of being in a college class lol. Fucking prick.
    Oh and btw. After every lesson, he checks if we put and sorted every utilities which I find ok, but he checks if they are in the absolute correct position. It feels like he is checking for the right order in the most detailed way... like millimeterwise.
    I am sure that he has no pets, kids and no wife at home.
    Edit: sorry for the mini rant lol
  • 3
    Yes, we do have to desolder finished, unfinished and projects that does not belong to us.
    We first do the prototyping with breadboards (incl. Arduino). Before that we calculate things on paper and create a visual version of the prototype with Lochmaster and test it there. And right after that comes the soldering.
    Last time we did a roulette with a button and 12 colored LEDs. Mine was unfinished due to lack of time and me being lazy :).
    Fortunaly, we were allowed to keep them home or throw them away.
  • 6
    @-ANGRY-CLIENT- What a miser. I buy most components from China for a few cents a pop. Might as well tell him that he could frequent AliExpress a bit more (like actual fucking engineers do all the time) instead of yelling at his students and making them waste their time on desoldering shit.

    I mean sure if you've got to reorder PCB's all the time and don't have a milling machine, sure constantly having to purchase new PCB's adds up. But even then, you can desolder and don't give a flying fuck about the components if the only thing you care about is the PCB.

    And if you really want to go fancy and become able to stop giving a flying fuck about broken PCB's as well, make your own with copper clad boards and chemically etching by using developer (some chemical substance).. Collin Cunningham (from Makezine) has a video on the matter, and his results looked very promising.

    Feel free to show him this comment, but be sure to let me know his reaction :3
  • 2
  • 5
    @-ANGRY-CLIENT- awesome :) if you're interested in the video from Collin Cunningham btw, you can find it here: https://youtube.com/watch/...
  • 2
    @Condor thanks. Will watch it
  • 5
    @-ANGRY-CLIENT- Another one is https://youtu.be/N3DGbwVXyN8 if you're interested. That one's from The Ben Heck Show from Element14.. kinda looking into etching myself, so I can't recommend any method over the other yet. I'll have to see for myself what's the most efficient way to do it first, given the tools I have around. But it's definitely better than perfboard (especially when you have to lay a lot of solder traces because wires look like spaghetti code in hardware) because solder can be expensive to lay thick traces of. PCB's on the other hand can take care of that.. hence why I'm so intrigued by them for my own projects. But I doubt that I'd want to wait for some company like JLCPCB to manufacture and deliver them all the time.
  • 7
    *must be condor*

    *open the rant*

    Yup
  • 2
    Don't use a lighter for enamelled wire! The copper will oxidise and it will be impossible to solder. Instead, scrape the coating with a scalpel (you don't have to scrape off everything, just make some copper visible) and solder through it.
  • 4
    @7400 it's so much easier though :P and the oxide layer can be easily removed after the fact. But yeah cutting it off with a knife allows for higher precision and prevents oxidation.. too late for that now but I'll keep it in mind next time. Got a couple of rolls of that wire here from the AliExpress beading category (for whatever reason it got categorized as that) so it'll probably be a recurring thing. Would be interesting if I could strip it off with a regular wire stripper somehow, but my current wire stripper isn't suitable for that.
  • 2
    @Condor: I usually solder straight through it when I have a cut end (the diameter of the wire seems to offer enough contact area for the solder). It depends a bit on the wire, because some have a much more resistant coating.
  • 4
    @7400 That's what I kind of assumed here as well.. the iron was set to 470°C as usual so it'd melt the enamel for sure.. but it didn't. Not sure why, but yeah perhaps the coating was too thick.
  • 1
    Love when you rant on hardware stuff. Maybe cuz I know almost nothing about it, respect.
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