Bad soldering or cheap chinese ****

Help
1

Ok, so over the 18 months I’ve been building, flying, crashing and rebuilding quads, I’ve become quite adept at soldering. Mainly by overheating flight controllers, ESC’s, 4-in-1 ESC’s etc. However on the odd occasion, I’ve come across the following.
I apply the solder (Armattan’s own) with a freshly fluxed and soldered hot iron for the minimum time possible to the pad. However, the solder will not stick to the pad. No amount of using a fibreglass pen or using a flux pen to clear the crud will get the solder to stick.

Now tonight’s fun is with a brand new 4-in-1 ESC board from Banggood (Sorry Alex, you didn’t have the one I wanted in stock). So the question is this - am I doing something wrong, or have I just got a dodgy board which won’t solder?

p.s. it’s all the pads on the board, not just one.

2

what temp is your iron set at?
and are you using a big enough tip?

Have a watch of this video for tips as well…


@Maximilian
5 Likes
3

Hi Jason, I’m running a large tip at 400C for the ESC pads; I’ve learnt to use big pads! :slight_smile:
This may help, but when I apply solder to this board (and only this board) I get black marks. Next question - beyond using the fibre glass pen, any hints n tips for the cleaning these pads?

4

Great video @maximillian :smiley:

1 Like
5

Problem solved - turned down the temperature and went for an even larger tip (too big to use normally). Recut the ESC wire, applied lots of flux to the pad and the freshly cut wire. Soldered the tip of the wire. Joined the two together and bingo :slight_smile:

1 Like