Neil Muralles

I am a Junior at LSU for Mechanical Engineering. The goal of this website is to display my current projects as well as log little bits of information I found helpful. I plan to also add previous projects since freshman year of college.

Final assembly
Finished board

Last week, I ordered multiple DIY soldering kits off of aliexpress so I could learn soldering for future projects while also creating some useful electronics (DIY waveform generator and oscilloscope). My first experience soldering is with this simple $2 led array with varying levels of resistance in series with an led.

Setup

My setup consisted of:

  • $2 Aliexpress DIY led array
  • $10 Amazon variable temperature soldering iron
  • Moist sponge and iron holder
  • Lead-Free solder
  • Brass sponge tip cleaner
  • No-clean flux syringe
  • Silicon mat
  • Harbor Freight helping hands
  • Harbor Freight multimeter
Sorting resistors
Organizing resistors using multimeter

Process

I first measured each resistor with my multimeter and ordered them from smallest resistance to largest. After this, I placed them in their respective through-holes on the PCB. I applied flux on each joint and began soldering. I heated the joint then applied the solder.

close up of soldering joints
First round of soldered joints

Above is a view of my first round of soldering. Not the best, but I wanted to get my hands dirty with this cheap project and learn by doing.

demo of diy soldering led kit in the dark
Final assembly demonstration

The next step was to place the LEDs into their holes and continue soldering, making sure to get the polarity correct. After this I soldered on the barrel power jack and switch set. My first soldering “job” was finished. Here is the final result being powered by a 5V MB102 supply with the effects of low to high resistance on red LEDs.

Thoughts

I had a great time soldering even with this simple board. I noticed that the quality of my soldering iron’s tip degraded highly even in this hour-long process. I’m pretty sure the tips that came with the iron are just cheap, I should invest in quality tips as I get into more and more advanced projects.

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