There are hundreds of different soldering iron tip shapes and sizes used in everything from jewelry making to plumbing to even stained glass. We’ll focus on the 3 most common for electronics work: ...

Modding today's hardware often means moving or removing tiny surface mount components, and using a standard soldering iron feels about as effective as using a hammer to kill a fly. If buying an ...

At some stage you will have to work with surface-mount devices (SMDs) and solder them by hand. You can wait until you are forced to learn, or you can leap into the fray with gusto and abandon. At some ...

Hackaday writer [Gerrit Coetzee] built a simple clamp to aid in surface mount component soldering. This cheap, easily made device uses gravity to hold tiny components in place. The tip of the bolt is ...

Typical soldering tips have a copper core, plated with iron. The copper allows heat transfer, and the iron plating provides durability. Soldering is a joining process involving a filler metal that is ...

Most, if not all, engineers know how to handle a soldering iron. But there are a few folks in the industry who want to know more about those wisps of smoke they sometimes see rising from our ...