exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

dad664npc wrote: 27 Sep 2023 05:16 If its the auto feed bits you are looking at ...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Soldering-Elec ... B0924L51Y2

Yeah someone posted similar a few days back. I did try to locate the tube but gave up in the end and ordered a steel tube for the solder wire then gave up and went for PTFE tube instead.

Those things do look useful for the odd job I guess though. Sometimes you need 3 or 4 hands to solder a pin :lol:

This short just popped up in my feed. It is basically what I was thinking of feeding solder from the front of the iron exactly the same as in the video. However ,I then thought I would angle it, so the solder itself would have more chance of hitting the pin AND the iron tip. As hitting the pin in theory would work, but if there is bad thermal contact on the pin with the iron, the pin might not be hot yet. So its better to hit inbetween the iron and pins.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-7uRFS1M ... ture=share

This one is interesting as it "tins" the tip just before it hits the pins. That would help solve thermal contact problems as well.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YbBJVrC_6iI

I have been trying to find a teardown of the proper soldering machines. But I guess it is not something cheaply available :( well with the thought if one popped up on evil bay at some point in a somewhat dysfunctional state etc I was wondering if I could replace the electronics with a 3D printer board. It would make life so much easier than messing with the programmers they come with.

After watching some more soldering feeding stuff a bit more, I have noticed some of them actually do use retraction. I presume because the heat of the iron tip could actually warp the solder (so it isn't straight any more) and can actually miss the iron tip afterwards. So I have just added in some retract and un-retract code into my script.


I'm still not really sure if the solder nozzle will work. Still waiting for it to turn up :(

Another thought I had is that I am not going to be able to use a automatic tip cleaner thingy. Because my nozzle assembly is in the way :( it seems all the printers get around this by having the whole assembly "retractable".

EDIT:
I was thinking of using a solenoid to move the assembly up and down. I could power it from the fan. But they seem expensive and a lot of work.

My second idea to simply extend the slot in the top bracket making it a couple inches longer. Then spring loading it. So basically when the whole assembly moves to the right, I would have some stopper bar mounted somewhere which presses on the assembly and compresses the spring moving the nozzle assembly out of the way for tip cleaning. Well it make sense in my head anyway :lol:

First solder feed test. Need to lower the nozzle a bit yet though!





Also the tube is a lot stiffer than I thought and Its a bit "low" so need to fix that as well.

New alignment.


Think I got a bit to much solder :lol:


and... first failure. I expected the bar to melt, just not so quickly :roll:


So I will have to sort out the metal parts which will delay things a few weeks :( I may printer another bar and move it further away to see if it will get me a bit more run time.

So the problem with the solder nozzle further away is its bending all over the place as it extrudes and its near impossible to predict where it will end up.


It looks like the solder hit the pin but the solder didn't melt and it just went to pot afterwards.





Though it is likely only going to work if nozzle is close so it can accurately as possible end up where it is supposed to go. This means I'll have to get a metal nozzle printed.. Which then means this printer comes off my desk and will probably never get back on there again :roll:

Managed to find the proper feeding nozzles.


https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004758371034.html

So will get a few sizes of those.

Also seen this.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005071416253.html


I think the problem with that setup is the height of it all. Because the extruder is extruding from the bottom of the head, it would have to bend upwards to go into that assembly just to come back down again :roll: in that case the whole extruder assembly would need moving upwards.. All the soldering iron mounted a lot further down.. There is already rather a steep set of curves just using a nozzle. So I don't want to end up redesigning even more stuff :roll:


I have also been watching professional solder machines more closely with the solder feeding. It seems they all melt a couple mm solder onto the tip and then have the tip hit the pin. I assume they are using the solder as a heat spreader because it would be always a little bit hit and miss if the soldering I would actually contact the pin, so they are using the solder as "gap filler" basically and to give the solder a head start on the joint.


https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YbBJVrC_6iI


Really need to download this video somehow so I can slow it down...

FFS!


I mean you cannot do anything but what you tube shorts. You cannot slow them down from what I can see or anything like that. So you need to download the things in order to view them properly. In which case it violates Google's rules... So basically they take away functionality and when people try and circumvent it, they complain.. Such as the world is... :roll:

Anyway. There seems to be other sites which let you do it so will give them a try.

EDIT:


So it does place some solder on the tip before going to the joint.

I also now assume that my original idea of using the nozzle probably isn't going to be as simple. Because the solder runs down that thin tube which would inherently straighten it out. It probably is not a problem if the nozzle is right next to the joint but I think the thing tube seems a standard way of doing it. So I need to really try and replicate that next.

Been thinking about this a bit. One problem is setting the Z-height in relation to the PCB. Setting it up should be consistant across multiple PCBs. BUT, if a board is just 0.1mm "out" , be in slightly bent, slightly different thickness, or marginal difference on the heights of pins, bed not totally level etc. Then setting a fixed "PCB height" is a bit of a PITA. I don't want to have to adjust it multiple times for any reasons. It needs to be more automatic.

So while it would be even more work which I was really trying to avoid doing. I'm thinking of putting the whole head assembly on a vertical rail. So basically if the soldering iron "hit" the PCB (note that it actually should be touching the PCB anyway) it wouldn't assert pressure onto the PCB other than the weight of the assembly itself. That could potentially be a little bit too much weight .So I may have to put a compensation spring as a type of weight limiter.

The annoying thing is I will probably end up having to redo a lot of the assembly to use the solder feeder tubes anyway. But if I'm going through all this hassle might replace the whole head assembly with a custom one anyway.

What I don't like about the current head assembly is that the heatsink part of the head is actually required to hold the head assembly into one piece. It's a bit of a different design than these types of things..


I would probably also change the orientation of the motor so it is forward facing. At least this way I can actually solve any potential jams or feed misses within the head assembly without having to dismantle the entire thing.

My metal printed parts come for my soldering printer :D they look very nice indeed!