Iron temperature for pedal construction?

[Beez]

Hi guys, first post here.

I just received my 'Sunking' board & before I start I would like to know what iron temperature do you recomend for pedal construction on MADBEANS PCB's?

Thanks
Rob

[jkokura]

It would help to know what kind of iron you're using. Are you fairly experienced in soldering small components or is this new for you?

I would recommend starting at a lower temp, and then raising it slowly if you find that it's not working well. You want to find a temp where you can do a solder joint quickly - both part and pad heat up within a couple seconds, the solder should flow quickly, and you should be in and out on EACH joint in 3 or less seconds.

So start low, and bring it up to the point where that's happening. Of course, it takes some practice to get up there. I recommend starting with your resistors on that board, particularly the flat lying ones. It's very hard to burn them out, and they can suffer some abuse from having to be soldered a couple times. Transistors, IC's and such DON'T tolerate it at all. Too much heat can hurt them.

If you're really worried about too much heat, use sockets for IC's and Transistors. I always use them for IC's, but haven't used them often for transistors. it's caused me headaches when debugging though, so I've started using sockets for transistors more recently, and it's proving to be a great move for me!

Jacob