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Soldering Tutorial

Soldering is a bit of an art form, and it’s not something the average person needs to do in his/her everyday life. This tutorial has been written to shed some light on basic soldering techniques and hopefully help those who are unsure of whether they are soldering correctly or not.

If you look at the pictures above you will see the red wire practically hanging off the T plug, the wire has not been tinned properly, the solder has not been sweated through the strands, it has been literally tacked onto the plug. This is an accident waiting to happen, the wire was able to be pulled off the plug quite easily and if this happened in flight, well we all know the end results!

Soldering a T Plug to a battery:

First you strip your red wire, "wet" the CLEAN tip of your soldering iron with a little solder, bring your hot iron to the wire and heat it up, then feed your solder in slowly so it sweats right through the wire strands and creates a solid shiny end.

Cut heat shrink long enough to cover the terminal and run down the wire 5-10mm. Slide it over the wire well away from the part to be soldered, otherwise the heat will cause it to shrink prematurely!

Fit your plug to a vice as shown in the pictures and tin the terminals. What we mean by tinning the terminals is coating them in a layer of solder. This is the same procedure as with the wire ends, heat up the terminal with direct contact from your "wetted" soldering iron tip and then add solder in so that it flows over the terminal and has a shiny surface.

Then clean and rewet the soldering iron with a reasonable amount of solder, put the wire in place and heat up the wire until all the solder melts and flows together on both the plug and wire, the wire will sink into place against the terminal. The joint should be shiny and smooth.

Slide up the heat shrink you placed on the wire BEFORE you soldered it to the plug, and shrink it into place. This protects the red terminal from any mishaps such as shorting out against the black wire.

Repeat the process with the black wire and you are finished. You now have a solid slurry free joint with properly tinned and sweated surfaces that will have a minimum of resistance and will provide long service life.