Make:

btw, the type of projects I want to do involve things such as the mint tin amplifiers and I want to get into circuit bending.

Also building a tube preamp would be on the horizon as well.

The soldering iron I use is <a href="http://mpja.com/productview.asp?product=15140+TL">this one</a> from MPJA. It has served me well, though the only thing I have to compare it against is those crappy irons you get from Radio Shack. I've never used a Weller, so they might be much better, but I feel I've gotten my $35.00 out of the MPJA iron.

No, not all solder is the same. The two things you need to consider are the alloy blend the solder is made from and the type of flux inside the solder.

In short, flux "cleans" the joint you're soldering. It's pretty much necessary for a good joint. Avoid acid core solder for electronics. Rosin core is the stuff you most likely want. There are more exotic types of flux with different properties (water solubility, easy cleanup, and so on) but if you've avoided acid core, you're probably good no matter what type you choose.

As far as alloys go, you probably want a standard tin/lead alloy. You'll see numbers on solder like "60/40" and "63/37". That's the ratio of tin to lead. 60/40 is a pretty standard one and works reasonably well. I generally use 63/37 because it's what's known as a "eutectic" alloy, or an alloy that behaves more like a single metal than a combination of two different metals. I find that 63/37 melts like butter.

As far as diameter, my current spool is .015", and it seems to be working out well. A little thicker probably wouldn't hurt. When I'm soldering, I generally keep the spool by my work and unwind a few inches, grasping it perhaps four inches from where I'm soldering and feeding into the work at the right time. I never really cut anything from the spool.

Anyway, to wrap up this ramble and answer your actual question, Radio Shack 60/40 rosin core will work for electronics.

Off topic, but thanks for that MPJA link. Looks like a cool company to know.

thanks, ive definitely got a lot from that info. and yeah we had a Weller in school and I really liked those so I think I'm going to go with one of them.

thanks again

I seem to be doing a lot of simmilar work as you, so here's my take on it:

I started out wanting to make a Cmoy (mint tin) amp, I had no electronics expirience to speak of so it was a huge project looming over me. I looked for a used iron locally, I found a weller in a tag sale that looked like it had been through a war. it was 60 watt and the guy gave me the iron, a replacement element and three different tips for $1.50. I started with some audio cables and made a few ok ones but this thing was burning the insulation of wires and the plastic in between the barrel sections of the 3.5mm jack. I tried it on a cmoy but it was WAY too much heat for the componants. 60 Watts is too much for this kind of soldering.

I went online and bought a soldering kit (the one that comes with the stand, iron, flux, solder, etc) for like $25. I soldered the two velman kits that came with it but neither worked, at least I wasnt detroying things with this iron (this one was like 15 watt, much more reasonable). I made a few more cables with success, I then managed to save one of the velman kits.

I knew I wasnt ready for anything serious so I went to radioshack and bought their strip board (like four of them) a few bags of assorted LED's, a ressistor assortment and some hook up wire. I spent several hours soldering all the LED's in various ways then desoldering them. I then tackled the 2nd, unworking velman kit and managed to make it work.

by this point I was out of solder so I went to radioshack and grabbed a spool, while I was there I decided to grab their "delux iron", went home and soldered some more of the parts, immeadiatly I notced the rs solder flowed so much better than the generic stuff that came from my kit, I was not at all impressed with their Iron, the cheapie that came with the kit was much better.

I looked online and talked to a few local buisness' , I managed to demo a weller WTCPT station ($125 or so), a higher end Metcal station (~$700) and a hakko iron ($75?). the metcal was sweet and out preformed the other two by miles. the weller was nice and I liked it over the hakko (but the hakko was by no means lacking). I recently purchased the weller station and use it for all my projects from 1/4 cables to smd work and it has treated me wonderfully, I've built a number of the Mint tin amp's and some higher end amps too.

as far as solder goes: Radioshack solder was a huge improvement over the generic stuff that came in my kit, it was astonishing the difference. I wondered if more expensive solder was even better so I started looking around, visiting local buissnesses to see what they were using etc. I ended up finding a buissness that was throwing away a whole bunch of stuff in a conversion to a machine. I picked up like a pound of Kester flux, 4 lbs of bowman rosin core 60/40 solder, 20 or so feet of desodlering braid, some smaller spools of small diameter kester solder and a tub of heatshrink for $20. the result: bowman solder was good, noticably better than the radioshack stuff but not by much, the radioshack stuff worked just fine for all my needs. the small Kester solder was amazing though, flowed nicely, cooled evenly, and was giving me the 'shiny' joints more often than any other solder.

conclusion: solder doesnt matter too much, Radioshack rosin core is just fine.
for an iron, skip on radioshack's iron... its crap.
I've heard good things about this one and at $35 its not a bad deal: http://www.circuitspecialists.com/prod.itml/icOid/7307
theres a $50 one but I havent heard anything about it.

good luck

I am 99% sure that the iron from CSI that jerb pointed out and the iron from MPJA that I pointed out are, in fact, the same iron. The packaging and manual that accompanied my MPJA iron made me suspect that it was made in China and simply badged with the MPJA logo. The CSI iron says it is "O.E.M. manufactured just for Circuit Specialists Inc." which implies that somebody else made it and put the CSI badge on it. Also, from the pictures, both irons appear to be identical. Anyway, that's two votes for what I'm guessing is the same iron.

Can anyone explain the difference between a soldering station & a <a href="http://www.circuitspecialists.com/prod.itml/icOid/8436">rework station</a>? Is it worth spending the extra money?

I'm pretty sure that "rework station" means that it has a hot air gun. You can remove surface mount components with a regular soldering iron, but it's a lot harder to solder them down. People do it all the time though.

I am not coordinated enough to use my hot air gun. I bought a soldering station that came with a desoldering iron, and when that's working it's worth all the money I paid for it. I need a new tip for it though.

Adding to what folks have already suggested, you will want to get some desoldering braid and a "solder sucker" for fixing your mistakes. Both have their uses, I usually use the solder sucker for removing the bulk of the solder- sometimes it helps to actually *add* solder to the joint to give it more to suck, then clean up with the solder braid.

Found this while looking at the "add an LCD to your project" link.

<a href="http://www.technick.net/public/code/cp_dpage.php?aiocp_dp=how_to_solder">How to solder</a>

Also, there's this, for working with SMD components.
<a href="http://www.infidigm.net/articles/solder/#floodandsuck">SMD Soldering Guide by Infidigm</a>