Aaah, this is really not a good beginner's guide to soldering! Cranking up to max temperature might work a lot of the time but runs the risk of frying ICs and causing PCB traces to come off. Also using a wet sponge can cause the tips to rust. It's much better to clean them with a brass "sponge" leaving the tip tinned to protect it. Finally the real key to easy soldering is solder flux (and leaded solder if you're allowed).
A wet sponge doesn't cause rust, it's occasionally blamed for cracking plating when you use a high temperature.
If you use a moderate temperature (650°F/340°C) it's a gentler way to clean flux residue off the tip.
Brass wool I reserve for scrubbing oxidation off the tip, but this eventually wears through the plating so I don't do this often.
Leaded solder is both toxic and completely unnecessary for hobbyist use. I like SAC305 but SN99.7 works well too—the key is a good quality flux core.
No-clean flux is convenient but if you do want to clean it, it's gummy and makes a mess. "Yes-clean" flux leaves conductive residue so it must be cleaned, but it is easier to clean.
As far as temperature goes, the better your iron is at transferring heat, the lower the tip temperature you can use, which improves tip life and, as you mention, reduces the chance of part damage.
I am a lead dev on an open-source hardware project (PhobGCC) and I've seen damage caused by bad soldering irons time and time again. Don't cheap out. I recommend a Weller WE1010.
Seconding this. Have been using the same JBC tips for 4 years with great success.
When using the brass wool, I tend to lightly rest the tip in a clean area. Maybe sometimes I will rotate it a few times, but I never use pressure or make wiping or scrubbing motions. I'm not sure if it really matters though (ie. how do the hardness of the tip plating and the brass compare?).
Sponges - if you have a decent iron, you should be using a clean, damp-not-wet, sulfur-free, cellulose sponge. This means: buy the type sold for use with a soldering iron, squeeze the water out of it after wetting it, and switch to a fresh one when it gets cruddy. I have never had an issue.
Flux - hobbyists either try to use 50-year-old parts with totally oxidized plating and no flux, or they use too much flux. New parts should not need more flux than you have in your flux-core solder or in your paste.
The next thing that happens after people discover flux is that they want to clean it off, and 99% of the time, hobbyists should not be cleaning flux. If you cannot measure the reason for cleaning your board, leave it alone. The manufacturers will tell you that modern RA and RMA type fluxes do not require cleaning for "most applications" - and "most applications" almost certainly means you.
No-clean flux should be called "never-clean" for the reason you outline. You shouldn't try to clean it, and it will never get as clean as you'd like if you do. I like no-clean for stuff I'm going to show to other people. You will almost certainly use no-clean in production if you go to production.
Water-clean is lovely stuff but it's very unforgiving. It will corrode if not cleaned, and you have to plan to wash your board by using sealed parts or adding water-sensitive parts afterward. You have to be careful with tip temperature too or it will destroy your tips. I have a spool of 63/37 water-clean I've used maybe twice - the boards sparkled but it was just too much trouble.
"Yes-clean" flux has absolutely been the cause of controller malfunctions due to its conductivity for makers of my controller project. It needs to be removed.
Could be so, and it can depend on the flux and the processing, but it's almost never the flux. From a 10,000 ft look at your project, I wouldn't expect it to need the high isolation or high impedances that would drive a serious cleanliness spec. You could have other issues that a temperature and humidity test would uncover with no-clean, for example. We can discuss them if you'd like.
Depends on what you mean by "yes-clean" though - "water-clean" OA flux must absolutely be cleaned - it can start to corrode overnight even.
The "yes-clean" flux I'm talking about is high-solids rosin flux that leaves a conductive residue. The conductivity can definitely cause a circuit to fail.
Makers come to our discord chat, asking why their builds aren't working and post a pictures.
I suggest cleaning the flux off, and they start functioning.
As an aside:
My current solder brand (Chip Quik) has a "no-clean water-soluble" flux that I'm curious about. Surely that's not going to be as corrosive as the flux you're talking about. (I probably wouldn't use it myself because it needs 140°F water to dissolve)
Without answering how much conductivity you had, how it caused the circuit to fail, what part of your circuit failed, and in what way, you haven't really narrowed it down to the flux, even if cleaning helped. There are a number of more likely root causes of the kind of issue you describe. I can make time for going into that if you're interested.
"No-clean water soluble" is news to me. Don't know if I'd trust that in a humid environment.
My budget is more in the $20 - $25 range. Cheap adjustable-temp soldering irons are available for under $4 [0], surely there is some middle ground between those irons and the $115 unit you suggest?
The problem is that bad soldering irons are infuriating. I started with super cheap one and it didn't work at all. I upgraded to $20 adjustable one that worked for a while but is inconsistent. I thought it was my bad technique until this thread but sounds like it is the quality.
The $25 Pinecil sounds good and is probably your best option. I may go for soldering station since I can afford it.
Thanks. The Pinecil comes out to $60 with the $35 shipping to my corner of the world. )) Other than that it looks terrific. If I'm ever in the US or Europe and I can receive mail, I'll try to order one.
Yes, I actually do have an iron similar to the one I posted. I like it, but I typically leave it at its highest temperature (which, as you state, just means full power).
I use leaded solder and have for years but I’d love to replace it with something less toxic. The trouble is that lead-free solders I’ve tried require high temp and flow very differently from leaded solder.
Does SAC305 (for example) flow and cool in a similar way to good old 63/37?
340c would be a pretty high setting for most casual use... Good chance you'll ruin a board like that. Modern solder is pretty easy to work with around 250c and the risk of overheating the board is a lot lower. Unless you're soldering giant connectors there's no reason to tell a beginner to crank it over 300c.
No mention of solder suckers or tinning either. Mention of how to reflow connections using a heat gun is a simpler alternative to an iron for fixing some problems too.
A bit of a detraction from the link but can anyone who's lived for a significant amount of time in both the UK and the US confirm that £100k is equivalent to $200k?
It seems fairly unlikely to me as UK tax and NI would be around 50% plus everything you purchase has 20% VAT. Sure medical insurance in the US is insane but surely that doesn't quite cover it.
I worked at Coinbase making 140k GBP in base compensation.
My SF based colleagues with the same job title were making 250k USD (so 202k GBP).
We sat down one day and compared our household budgets line by line and in the end we estimated that 'money left over' for equivalent house, medical and kids education my American colleagues were slightly better off, but maybe only by 5-10k USD per year.
Bare in mind at the time coinbase also paid above market rate in London (London rates were cut for new hires shortly after IIRC) (I also worked at CB London)
140k is an incredible salary in the UK though, like top 0.1% at least.
It's also hard to compare things 1:1 - since the NHS is "free" (via taxation), but it doesn't cover dentistry at all really whereas equivalent good US health insurances will do.
The fact that people living in SF managed to be ahead by anything proves there's a massive delta, especially since you're wording this in past-tense (SF has gotten cheaper depending on the timeline you consider)
I think it’s a bit hard to make direct comparisons because the US is more varied in things like tax policy or having multiple important cities.
For a while, the strong pound made it seem like people in the U.K. were well paid compared to most developed countries (not the US which tends to have higher pay than basically any other medium or large country) but I think this was mostly just the strong pound and purchasing power wasn’t much higher in the U.K.
The pound has fallen a lot in the last decade and I think various numbers like pay have been somewhat sticky and not really gone up to match the increased cost of imports.
To attempt to make a comparison, if you live in central London vs Manhattan, tax rates will be comparable (maybe more so if you double both gross salaries), rents in Manhattan will be something like 2x (probably more) based on apartment type but you’ll potentially get something bigger/nicer in NY (ie partly it is about a difference in the average unit, but if all you can get is a large apartment, you have to pay for all of it so controlling for such qualities isn’t so relevant). Rent controls mean that the supply of apartments is less than might be expected based on the number of housing units In Manhattan. Groceries (in Manhattan) are more expensive, as are things like restaurants. The comparison doesn’t feel totally crazy to me.
Other US cities may be different though, eg I don’t know how the taxes/rent would work out in SF or the Bay Area or Seattle or Chicago. There isn’t really much of an alternative to London in the U.K. in the same way that there are many ‘top’ cities in the US and tax policy is much more uniform between locations.
I earn well above that and my effective tax rate is well below 50%. The top marginal rate is 47% except for a narrow band due to phase out of personal allowance, but my effective rate is lower.
With respect to VAT, it nudges my total tax paid up about 4 percentage points. Total, including VAT, NI, and council tax is still well below 50%.
Remember, you're not going to spend nearly all of your pre tax earnings on VAT rated goods and services, given you pay tax and housing andany other things which does not incur VAT.
It’s worth considering employer payroll taxes which might be different (though my memory from looking it up a while ago was that the payroll taxes weren’t so different). It’s also possible to have another effective 9% marginal tax from student ‘loans’ though that will go away after a while.
It's not normal to count payroll taxes as part of the employers tax, as that would also increase the gross salary above that which the employee considers their salary to be. E.g. nobody factors that in when comparing California salaries to the many US states with no payroll tax.
Even so, you need to get up towards 300k GBP/year to exceed 50% even with the payroll tax. And that assumes you're making zero pension contributions (as contributions are offset against your tax up to 40k gross/year)
With respect to student loans, sure, you can add that in but then you need to do that when comparing to the US salary levels in this thread too.
Payroll taxes matter to some extent when comparing employment in different tax regimes because they determine (some of) the total cost to the employer. They can also matter for contracting arrangements. Though the local job market probably matters more.
Yes, but the sub-thread here started with someone suggesting they'd be paying 50% tax, and when talking in terms of employees, it's not normal to include it. When including it, we're usually talking about total tax wedge rather than tax rate (e.g. see OECD Taxing Wages).
Even so, as noted, you'd not hit 50% even with payroll taxes at anywhere near the income levels stated. At the stated 100k GBP contracted salary, your "salary" including payroll tax would be 113,207 GBP, and your total tax wedge would be 41% (compared to 33% combined income tax and NI).
Fair point. I was mostly responding to the bit from the root comment about the comparison between countries and not their incorrect understanding of taxes in the U.K.
£100k in the UK a top 10% wage for the country, but the wages in the UK are massively skewed towards London and the South East.
As for the tax, we have progressive taxation in the UK. Earning £100k, you'd pay 0% on the first 12.5k, 25% on the next 70k or so, and 45% on the last 27.5k (numbers are from memory so they might be a little off). High wage earners are not giving up half their income in tax. That'd be silly.
Basic rate of 20% on earnings between £12,571 and £50,270.
Higher Rate of 40% on earnings between £50,271 and £125,139.
Additional Rate of 45% on earnings from £125,140. (this is from the tax year starting next week, it used to be £150k instead of £125k)
You also gradually lose your tax-free allowance if you make over £100k so there's a weird dead zone in which your marginal rate is something like 60%.
Then there's NI which is effectively tax too but isn't listed in the bands above. Someone on £150k is paying 40% tax and NI (total, not marginal). Not quite half but it's not low either.
(You could get to more than 50% deductions if you factor in student loans)
The problem is most people simply aren't rich enough. The effective tax rate of our current, and richest, prime minister was only 22%. I'm on the low end of the higher rate bracket and already pay more than that, before counting NI/loans.
People assume wrongly but not everything has 20% VAT in the UK/EU and in the US not everything has the sticker price on it (think tips + sales tax + a lot of BS fees or friction as well around) so calculations have to consider those
I definitely appreciate that inflammatory articles might push us closer to war but it also seems rather dangerous to cover up anything that suggests war. That feels a bit reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain before WWII.
It's been entirely media driven since 2018 on the topic. Nobody cared about China before then, and they wouldn't care now if it weren't for the constant hype.
Anyone recall even seeing the acronym "CCP" in print before 2018 or so? Then suddenly it's ubiquitous and everyone knows it.
or suffered through endless advertisements for Shen Yun.
Edit: according to above, they've pivoted somewhat in terms of their political stance and direction since 2016.
Apparently Doctor Strange 2 ran afoul of censors for neglecting to scrub out an Epoch Times newspaper box that appeared briefly in a scene shot on location in New York.
I have. Shen yun are Taiwanese and really big on the KMT above and beyond the typical dance group, while epoch times is run by Falun gong people. Both dislike the ccp for their own obvious insider reasons. (Epoch times pivot to trumpland is an obvious play for them, works way better than natsec libs).
I wouldn't credit them for mainstream media's turn, though. We need a big bad and afghan goat farmers weren't cutting it.
If the threat is "they will be more powerful than the US within like 100 miles of their borders", I can understand concern on the part of Taiwan specifically but it's a little greedy for the US to need every single inch of the oceans..
I too noticed a drastic ramp up in anti-China headlines at a certain point in the early part of the Trump administration.
The shift was not exclusive to the media though. The US state department pivoted and went as far as removing active terrorist groups executing attacks near (Afghanistan, Turkmenistan) and in Western China, that the US itself was bombing, from the US terror watch lists at around the same time.
