3 Need-To-Know Soldering Techniques

Soldering iron: This is the most basic of the soldering techniques. You use a soldering iron to heat the component leg and the pad, then apply solder.

Using an oven: It is also called reflow soldering. Basically, just like baking bread, you bake your board the same way in an oven. It’s a very common technique for soldering surface mount components quickly. The cool thing about using the reflow soldering technique is that the components have a tendency to place themselves correctly. This is really useful for soldering integrated circuits with very little space between the legs. For example if you place an integrated circuit a bit off its pads, when the solder melts it will often slide into the right place.

Hot-air soldering: Hot-air soldering is a way to melt the solder by blowing really hot air at an area of your circuit board. It looks a bit like a soldering iron. But instead of a hot iron, it blows hot air. This is really useful for doing circuit board rework, especially fixing soldering errors on a board. For example if you soldered the chip the wrong way. It’s a hassle to desolder a chip pin-by-pin. But by heating it with hot air, the solder on all the pins melt at the same time and you can move it into the correct position.solder.