That is the question.
Our session this week started off with a conversation about how to pronounce the word “soldering”. Quite an interesting conversation it was; it ended with several comments about how American insist on being different.
After that conversation we got to meet the awesome Mitch Altman. Mitch Altman is a San Francisco-based hacker and inventor, best known for inventing TV-B-Gone, as featured speaker at hacker conferences, as international expert on the hackerspace movement, and for teaching introductory electronics workshops. Mitch is also the founder of Cornfield Electronics. Mitch taught us how to solder!
Here’s Mitch himself!
Armed with soldering irons, lead, and various electronics parts, we were off. Mitch gave us step by step instructions on how to solder the parts together. It was actually very cool and I feel like I’ve gain an awesome new skill. What we were putting together was a little light emitter which was made up of a micro controller, some led bulbs, a small battery, various other small parts. After about an hour, we ended up with this:
I’m not sure if what we made means much, however, I think what we did (solder) meant a lot! I read this interesting thought from sparkfun.com
Soldering is one of the most fundamental skills needed to dabble in the world of electronics. The two go together like peas and carrots. And, although it is possible to learn about and build electronics without needing to pick up a soldering iron, you’ll soon discover that a whole new world is opened with this one simple skill.
So that means that I am well on my way to working with electronics, the very road I expected to be through this class!
I think that learning how to solder was an amazing skill to pick up and though this was my first time, I think that this is a huge barrier being broken and I am excited to continue to work with electronics!
Toheeb, totally agree with you how important soldering is, I also had no idea what it was before hand. I was a little timid with the soldering iron before but as time went on it became a lot easier. Do you think you’ll be soldering in your final project design? If yes, let me know how it goes, I will probably be using it in my final design as well!
Love the title! I agree with you in that soldering is very important when talking about electronics. Anyone serious about getting into electronics needs to learn how to solder because as we saw first hand, it is hard to create something without that skill. Like you mentioned as well, soldering was a barrier for me and I am glad that I was not the only one prior to this workshop!