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Appreciation post: my shop lead said something about hand soldering that I keep going back and forth on
Last Tuesday I was reflowing a row of pins on a com radio board at our hangar in Wichita and my shop lead stopped behind me and watched for a bit. He told me he'd rather train a new guy to hand solder for 6 months than trust anyone who only learned on a hot air station, because the iron makes you feel how much heat the pad can actually take. Part of me agrees, since I learned on an iron and I can tell when a joint is about to lift just from how the solder flows. The other part of me has watched guys fresh out of school do cleaner work than me with hot air and a scope, in half the time, and I can't say their joints are worse. We do a lot of old King and Narco stuff here where the traces pull if you look at them wrong, so maybe it's a board age thing and not a skill thing. I don't want to be the grumpy guy guarding an old method, but I also don't want the new hires skipping a skill that saved me plenty of times. Has anyone here actually tested this, like same repair done both ways, and seen a real gap in how long the fix lasts?
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hugo_jones27d ago
Notice this everywhere: the tools you struggle with first teach you how much you can push anything.
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