Tag Archives: soldering

Announcing the “Soldering is Easy” Complete Comic Book!

April 11, 2011 Jeff 95 Comments

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 2015 the comic book has been translated into 21 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
ePub version by Hal Motley (contributed Feb 18, 2018)
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
	Arabic	Ahmed Mo’ni
	Azerbaijani	Orkhan Amiraslan
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
Lemiti je lako	Hrvatski Croatian	Ivan Matacic
PÁJENÍ JE JEDNODUCHÉ	Český Czech	Jindra Fučík
Det Er Nemt At Lodde	Dansk Danish	Jesper Haffgaard
Iedereen Kan Solderen	Nederlands Dutch	Ivo van den Maagdenberg Alt. translation by Deeeep
Jootmine On Imelihtne	Eesti Estonian	Markus Järve
Souder c’est Facile!	Français French (updated May 2015)	Snootlab
Löten ist einfach!	Deutsch German	Alexander Bodora Richard Meinsen
Οδηγός Για Εύκολη Συγκόλληση	Ελληνικά Greek	F.N.
Forrasztani Egyszerű	Magyar Hungarian	dnet
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
Este Ușor Să Lipeşti	Română Romanian	Andrei C. Papuc Alexander Bodora
ПАЯТЬ ПРОСТО	Русский Russian (new updated and colorized version!)	Atarity Alternate black and white version
Solder es Fácil (Version 1)	Español Spanish	SGTECH 2nd translation by juani_c
Att Löda Är Lätt!	Svensk Swedish	Christopher Eriksson
Паяти — просто	українська Ukranian	Ukranian Maker Association

Special thanks to Alexander Bodora for creating the original version of this table!

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

Electronics

Soldering is Easy: Here’s how to do it.

March 29, 2011 Jeff Leave a comment

This one page handout by Mitch Altman and Andie Nordgren teaches the basics of soldering in a simple and easy to understand way.

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.

Electronics, Kits, Microcontrollers

Kit Building Party Photos & Video

November 2, 2009 Jeff 1 Comment

This weekend I hosted a post-Halloween kit building party at MightyOhm HQ.

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…

Kit Building Party

Safety first!
Kit Building Party

Stuart was the first to finish his kit:
Kit Building Party

Soldering the kits together to form the matrix:
Kit Building Party

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

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!

Electronics

Tools!

September 29, 2009 Jeff Leave a comment

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.

Events, Kits, Projects

Celebrating one year of hacks and projects at mightyohm.com!

July 20, 2009 Jeff 4 Comments

Wow! I can’t believe it’s been a year!

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

PID Controller closeup

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

Charging

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

PID Controlled 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

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

Finished Wifi Radio

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!