Tools Part 1 - Soldering Station
Building an Apple 1 replica and experiencing with electronics obviously requires a lot of gear.
One of the most important is the soldering station.
Even though I’m far away to actually solder a component on an Apple 1 board, I’m already trying a few things with a soldering iron.
Vintage components can be expensive, and I really don’t want to mess-up things with bad soldering.
My soldering station is a Weller WECP-20:
It’s not in production anymore, but as far as I can tell, Weller seems to be one of the best brand when it comes to soldering irons.
The funny story about my WECP-20 is that I got it from my girlfriend.
Its original owner got rid of it, so she found it on the street and brought it back home, thinking it was just too cool.
This was a few months before I decided to build the Apple 1 replica, and I wasn’t very happy about it, because our place is not so huge, and there’s already tons of stuff in it… : )
I told her to get rid of it, but fortunately she did not.
It’s in perfect condition, and is working fine.
I bought some new tips, as the original one was completely corroded.
I’m still not sure which one to use in which condition, as I got a lot of differently shaped tips, but I’ll just see as it goes.
For the solder itself, I had a hard time choosing one, as there’s just so many brands and kinds of solder.
I finally choose Kester solder, 60/40, 0.51mm and 0.79mm (.020 and .031).
60/40 means there’s 60% of tin and 40% of lead.
You can find solder with different amounts of tin/lead, as well as lead-free solder, but it looks like the 60/40 one is the most used in electronics.
The diameter is also extremely important.
I choose two different diameters, so I can experiment with both.
As far as I can tell, with my poor soldering experience, I actually prefer the small one (0.51mm - .020).
That’s for the basic stuff…
When doing soldering works, there’s also a few accessories you may want to consider.
The first one is a desoldering-pump.
A desoldering-pump, as the name implies, is a kind of pump you can use to ease the process of desoldering components from a board.
It can be because you made a mistake while soldering the component, or because you want to desolder a vintage component from its original board, in order to reuse it.
Mine is a Weller 7881:
Using it is very simple. You «charge» it, and simple apply your soldering iron on the solder you want to remove.
When the solder is melting, you activate the pump, and it will just suck the solder away. Clean and fast…
Well, that’s all for today… : )
Stay tuned…