Do you want to learn how to solder?  Do you want to make really cool things?  Do you want to teach other people how to solder (and make cool things too)?

I’m happy to announce the release of Soldering is Easy, a comic book that will teach anyone the basics of soldering.

This seven page comic book explains in detail and with pictures how to make a good solder connection.  It also teaches you all the other bits and pieces of knowledge  that you need to successfully solder together an electronic kit, even if you’ve never soldered before!

I worked with Mitch Altman (@maltman23) and Andie Nordgren to create this revised and extended version of the wildly popular one page handout that Mitch and Andie created in 2010.

The comic (and lots more cool stuff!) will be included in a book that Mitch and I are writing about How to Make Cool Things with Microcontrollers (For People Who Know Nothing). It will be published by No Starch Press.

Here’s a sample page (click for a bigger version):

As of January 2012 the comic book has been translated into 15 other languages! A huge thanks to everyone who sent in translations and is helping us spread our message around the world! We would love for people to translate the comic book into more languages! If you create a translation, please post a comment here and I’ll link to it! If you’re looking for help with a translation, you can try posting in the forums.

The comic is released under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-ShareAlike), so you are free to teach with it, color it, modify it, share it with your friends, translate it, and basically do whatever you like with it!

English:

The complete comic book is available for download here:

“Soldering is Easy” Comic Book (PDF)

We also have some other versions of the comic available:

• FullSolderComic.mobi – Amazon Kindle version by bloo
• FullSolderComic_Booklet_11x17_EN.pdf – An 11×17 version that you can fold into an actual comic book (with 8.5×11 pages).
• FullSolderComic_Images_20110409.zip – 300 DPI images of each page
• FullSolderComic_NoText_20110409.zip – 300 DPI images without text (for translation)
• A PDF version without text is also available.
• FullSolderComic.zip – the Comic Life source file used to create all of the other versions. This is probably the best place to start if you are making a translation, but you’ll need a Mac and a copy of Comic Life.

Translations:

PDF File	Language	Translators
焊接是容易的	简体中文版 Chinese (Simplified)	XinCheJian
焊接是容易的	繁体中文版 Chinese (Traditional)	XinCheJian
Jootmine On Imelihtne	Eesti Estonian	Markus Järve
Souder c’est Facile!	Français French	Lionel Delteil (Snootlab)
Löten ist einfach!	Deutsch German	Alexander Bodora Richard Meinsen
Οδηγός Για Εύκολη Συγκόλληση	Ελληνικά Greek	F.N.
Menyolder Itu Gampang	Bahasa Indonésia Indonesian	Rudi Voon
Saldare E’ Semplice	Italiano Italian	Michele Maffucci
ハンダ付けなんて簡単だ！	日本語 Japanese	Yoshi
Det Er Enkelt A Lodde	Norske Norwegian	Henrik Sandaker Palm
Lutowanie Jest Proste	Polski Polish	Mark
Solder É Fácil	Português Portuguese (Brasilian)	Radamés Ajna
ПАЯТЬ ПРОСТО	Русский Russian	Atarity
Solder es Fácil (Version 1)	Español Spanish	SGTECH 2nd translation by juani_c
Att Löda Är Lätt!	Svensk Swedish	Christopher Eriksson
Special thanks to Alexander Bodora for creating this table!

And really, soldering is easy (and fun!).  Learn how to solder and teach your friends!

Update 2011-09-23:

Comments are now closed. Please use the online forums to discuss translations of the solder comic, ask questions, and give us feedback. Thanks!

I’m very, very familiar with this comic, for reasons that I hope to reveal soon.

Enjoy!

Soldering is Easy, by Mitch Altman and Andie Nordgren.

Click the image to open a full size version or visit Andie’s site to download a PDF version suitable for printing.

Nine close friends built Conway’s Game of Life kits from Adafruit Industries.  This is my favorite kit for these kinds of workshops because it’s easy for beginners to complete in about 2 hours, and when everyone is done, you can wire all of the kits together to create one large cellular automata display.  The last time I helped people build this kit was at a Make:SF workshop at the TechShop in Menlo Park.

Here’s a timelapse video of the afternoon, shot with a Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro webcam on an Eee PC 4G running Booru Webcam 2.0.

The capture interval was 5 seconds.  I used Quicktime Pro to stitch the images together at 15fps and iMovie to add titles and music (Turbo Outrun by FRP from remix.kwed.org.)

I wore my Halloween costume for most of the afternoon.  What am I?  Most people on the streets of San Francisco had no idea…

Safety first!

Stuart was the first to finish his kit:

Soldering the kits together to form the matrix:

Nine happy kit-builders with the 3×3 matrix they created with their finished kits:

And lastly, a video of the 3×3 matrix in action:

Three people had little to no soldering experience at the beginning of the afternoon.  Everyone who came went home with a working kit.  Success!

Peter Edwards of Casper Electronics shared a picture of his workbench today via Make.

With the exception of the audio recorder and circuit bending tools, pretty much every piece of equipment on that bench can be found on mine as well.  I even have the same yellow bins!

There’s a great writeup on his site describing each numbered tool in the photo.  If you started from scratch and bought all of the items on his list, you would have a great instant electronics workshop.

Based on the date of my first post, last Wednesday marked the one year anniversary of my blog.

While I pour a toast, here are a few highlights of the past year:

PID Controlled Solder Paste Fridge

The first project I documented on the site, my solder paste fridge was the end result of a weekend effort to turn an old beer chest into a PID-controlled Peltier cooler for storing tubes of solder paste. A year later, the cooler has a permanent home under my workbench and is still going strong, keeping its contents at a chilly 36 degrees F. Besides solder paste, I keep my POR-15 rust proofing epoxy paint and a few tubes of superglue in the fridge (they never dry out!).

Space Invaders!  Making RGB video with the PIC

I needed an excuse to learn assembly language programming on the PIC, and this project fit the bill perfectly.  Instead of slogging through yet another PIC tutorial I decided to “just do it” and the video above shows the result.  One of my favorite projects of last year, I have plans to build more of these and make some electronic artwork for the lab.

Bluetooth Handset Hack

One aging bluetooth headset plus one obsolete telephone handset equals one retro-fabulous hack that I still use today.  The best part: Look for this one in Make: volume 20!

DIY PID-Controlled Soldering Hotplate

I’m a big fan of the hotplate (aka reflow skillet) method of surface mount soldering.  Over the course of a few months I designed, machined, and assembled this PID-controlled soldering hotplate to help build the first few prototypes of my AVR HV Rescue Shield kit.  Hacking around in the garage is always fun, but creating a new tool is one of the most rewarding things I have can think of.

Here’s a video of the hotplate in action, reflowing the step-up converter on the Rescue Shield:

The AVR HV Rescue Shield

What started as a simple hack to save a crippled AVR microcontroller eventually became a kit that I’ve sold to AVR enthusiasts around the world.  The AVR HV Rescue Shield includes a cool custom PCB, integrated 5V-12V step-up power supply, and is completely open source.   I only made one batch of these, and when they’re gone, they’re gone, so head over to the AVR HV Rescue Shield product page to order one today!

Wifi Radio Project

Certainly the most famous project on the site, my Wifi Radio project has inspired many readers to start playing with cheap wireless routers and embedded Linux.  If you haven’t seen it before, the finished project sounds something like this:

I brought the Wifi Radio to the Maker Faire in San Mateo in May.  Everyone loved it, including some of the Make: staff, which got me a blue ribbon for the project.  Awesome!

Onward!

Well, that’s it for year one…  If I missed one of your favorite posts from the past year, leave a comment!  If you’re new to the blog, happy reading, you have some catching up to do. 

Here’s to another fantastic year of hacks, projects, kits, tools, and resources at mightyohm.com!

Keith of Keith’s Electronics Blog made a PID-Controlled Soldering Hotplate based on the one I fabricated earlier this year.  He’s already using it to build the stepper controller PCB for the MakerBot CupCake CNC!

He also posted a bunch of teardown photos (like the one shown below) of the CD101 PID Controller from Sure Electronics.  I suspect the CD101 is a cheap knockoff of an RKC PID controller since I can’t find the part number on RKC’s website, even though the front panel clearly says RKC on it.  I guess at $40 you can’t ask too many questions, the price is right…

Copycat PID-Controlled Solder Hotplate « Keith’s Electronics Blog.

Yesterday, Sparkfun had a solder paste stencil class at their HQ in Boulder, CO.

@esawdust was there and took lots of great photos and notes about the class:

Sparkfun Stencil and Solder Paste Class | PCB, Solder Paste | sawdust.see-do.org

Wish I could have been there, it looks like everyone had a great time!

Last week I posted about the DIY PID-Controlled Soldering Hotplate I designed and built to improve my surface mount soldering capabilities.

I mentioned one issue I was having with the hotplate on flickr.  Specifically, the aluminum baseplate was getting too hot for comfort (literally) when I set the hotplate to solder reflow temperatures (180-220C) for more than a few minutes.  At the time I thought it was due to radiant heat from the upper aluminum block transferring to the bottom plate.  I later discovered that the ceramic spacers I used to hold up the hotplate were much more thermally conductive than I thought and the screws I used to attach the baseplate to the spacers were burning hot before the rest of the baseplate.  It was conducted heat, not radiant, that was the primary cause of the problem!

McMaster-Carr to the rescue!

I was able to resolve the issue by reducing the diameter of the ceramic spacers from 1/2″ to 1/4″ and using all stainless hardware to attach the spacers.  Now the baseplate stays relatively cool even with the hotplate at high temperatures for long periods of time.

Click on the pictures below or view the complete set on flickr.

The right tool for this job is a stereo microscope.  Stereo microscopes use two separate optical paths to provide you with depth perception, very helpful for working with 3-dimensional objects like printed circuit boards.  Even better is a stereo zoom microscope, where the magnification factor can be changed by turning a knob instead of swapping out lenses.

Until now I assumed that a stereo zoom microscope would be way out of my price range, at least several hundred or a thousand dollars for a very basic setup.  However, some searching on eBay showed that good deals can be had, and a used microscope with a boom stand suitable for surface mount work can be found for as little as $200-$300.  New microscopes are available for $400-$500, although there is some debate regarding the quality of low-cost imported microscopes.  Caveat emptor.

For surface mount soldering, 7-30x magnification is reasonable (that’s 10x eyepieces * a 0.7-3x objective), and a 4″ or greater working distance makes using tools under the microscope a lot easier.

I ended up buying an American Optical (AO) model 569 with an illuminator and boom stand, shown below.  Total cost was just over $200 with shipping.

Combined with the PID controlled hotplate I just put together this is a very powerful setup for doing rework of very tiny components – I could probably work with 0402′s, maybe even 0201′s if I was careful.  Using this setup, 0805′s are easy. (and they look huge!)

The scope is very old, it was made in the late 1970s, but it has survived in extremely good condition.  Upon receiving it, I tightened some setscrews and regreased the slides and it’s as good as new, despite being over 30 years old!

There are a few more photos of the microscope setup on flickr.

The image quality is excellent.  Here are a couple pictures of my SYBA USB-Audio Adapter taken with the microscope and my Sony DSC-V1 digital camera.  I held the camera up to one eyepiece, set it into macro mode, and snapped the shutter – these images are straight off the camera with no retouching.

Click to enlarge.

In preparation for my Arduino-based AVR HV Programmer boards coming back, I decided to step up my home lab surface mount soldering capabilities.

Step one was to find a cheap stereo zoom microscope on ebay, with 7-32X magnification, perfect for working on surface mount devices.  One of my biggest frustrations in the past is that with a cheap magnifying ring light, I can’t actually see what I’m working on – not any more!  I’ll post some photos of the microscope when it comes.

Step two was to build a soldering hotplate.  I like using a hotplate for surface mount soldering because you can actually watch the board as the solder paste reflows, and manually add/remove/nudge components around with a set of tweezers.  This is great for engineering work where you may still be making component changes and other tweaks to the board.  Mass production is probably best left to a reflow (aka toaster) oven.

I posted a few photos of the hotplate on flickr, which ended up on Hackaday.

The hotplate:

The heater is a 1/2″ 500W, 120VAC cartridge heater I bought from McMaster-Carr for about $25.  The hotplate itself is a 3x4x1″ chunk of aluminum that I machined with a carefully sized hole just below the center for the heater to slip into, as shown.  A type-K thermocouple (top right) measures the temperature and provides a signal to the controller.  Ceramic standoffs insulate the hotplate from the bottom aluminum baseplate.  For safety, there is also a ground strap, shown on the bottom right.

This the second PID controlled project I have done, the first was my PID Controlled Solder Paste Fridge.

The controller:

The controller box contains an Omega CN77000 series PID controller and an IR/Crydom 240V 40A (overkill!) D2440 Solid State Relay (SSR), along with a power switch, fuse, and power connector.  The PID controller and solid state relay were both found at a now-defunct Silicon Valley surplus store for a few bucks each.  A 3′ umbilical cable connects the controller to the hotplate.

60/40 leaded solder reflows at about 185C, and lead-free solder is around 200-230C depending on the alloy.  (Wikipedia has a good list of reflow temperatures.)  The hotplate can easily reach these within a minute or two from room temperature and could get much hotter if necessary.

It can also be used to cure epoxy and perform any other tasks that require a precisely controlled heater – this could be the world’s most overengineered coffee warmer, if not for the dangers of lead poisioning.

Update: I just posted some more information about the microscope.