My Fab Lab experience just keeps getting more and more fabulous each time I visit. This week, my group had the chance to get our hands on soldering, which by definition is the act of fusing together the joints of metal objects by melting a filler metal. This is different from welding, a term I was more familiar with, in that it doesn’t involve melting of the actual workpiece, but rather just the filler metal which connects the wires. Our goal was to use soldering techniques to fuse LED lights and sensor wires together with the use of Arduino board to make a cool LED product. It was quite an intimidating process at first and I faced some challenges listed below, but gradually I was able to overcome some struggles I had and successfully create the final product–a series of LED lights that respond to the light sensor.
Challenges I faced while soldering for the first time:
- Fear of getting burned (the soldering gun heats up to 350 degrees Celcius, which could cause a second degree burn with a single touch)
- Not having the wires stay connected although the filler metal has melted on them
- The smell. It wasn’t the best unfortunately.
This eye-opening experience certainly enhanced my interest in soldering and would definitely try again if I had the chance. Also, I looked up a few soldering products that look really neat. These are of course much more complicated projects than the one we did in class, but the basic technique is similar. Check them out!
