Let’s get started

Slowly

I believed I’ve got all the tools I need for now so let’s start building this puppy.
This kit is not so easy to get (no on-click buy on Amazon or simple trip to a shop) so I’d rather not break it.
Also I’m new at soldering having only done it a few times since high school so I’ll take my time.

Bending and soldering

I bent all the diodes and resistors by hand the best I could.
This took a while because I don’t have a tool for that.
Also I was extra careful not to break any of the legs.

The I inserted all 30 diodes above the switches.
I OCDed over this a bit and after doing 3 or 4 I was not satisfied because the color stripes did not align.
This WAS A GOOD THING!!

I then remembered an old memory from College that diodes have a polarity!
So I RTFM again and paid more attention and yep parity do matter.
There is also a little symbol on the PCB for each diode that reminds you of that fact.
That’s a very good job from Oscar, the maker of the kit.

So I repositionned the two that were incorrectly placed and carried on with the rest.
It became tricky to keep all of these in place so I bent the legs a bit wider
and used masking tape to hold everything together.

Onece this was done, I set the solder iron temperature to 275ºC and attempted to solder the first one.

At that point I realised I hadn’t switched the tip to the new chiselled one.
Dooh!
Ok, need to wait for that one to cool down and then do swap it.
I hope this will be easier with that larger end.

My previous tests weren’t too good either.
And with this tip, I find it still difficult to melt the solder which I didn’t expect.

Oscar recommands to set the temperature to 275ºC to avoid over-heating the componants.
The Hakko FX889D has a good reputation in that regard so that’s not it.

I googled the specs for the WYCTIN WYC-303 solder I’m using and it should melt at 217ºC but it takes too much time IMHO
and this makes it difficult for me.
After several attempts, I cranked up the temp to 375ºC and I barely got it to melt.

I’d rather not burn anything so I need a different approach.

This solder is non leaded which many “savvy” people say is shit.
It’s also commonly accepted that ⁴⁰⁄₆₀ lead solder is simpler and more forgiving for beginners.

Back to the shop…none where I live, so I’ll need to wait for another Amazon delivery…