Solder not sticking...

demogo

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Having issues getting the solder to stick to my wire and pin -- it just wants to roll away and not stick.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!
 
Having issues getting the solder to stick to my wire and pin -- it just wants to roll away and not stick.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

Sounds like you are melting the solder directly with the soldering iron and not heating up the wire and/or pin...and then touching the solder to either one. Solder will roll off if the parts are not up to temperature...
 
Lots of little things to do right when soldering. This video is the best explanation I've seen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_NU2ruzyc4

Keep parts hot, keep parts clean, tin the tip, use Tin/Lead Rosin core solder. As I recently found out, keep iron between 650 and 700 ;)
I just saw that a night or so ago in another post. Very well done. I just searched it out on youtube, and when i got back, it was already posted.

Anyway, it is a very good video. IMHO, he puts a bit more solder on the iron when he starts than is necessary, but, his technique will work fine, you'll just need to clean the tip on your iron a bit more frequently.
 
If the parts to be soldered are clean, hot enough, made out of solderable material, and fluxed; they will solder. In your case, one or more of those conditions have not been met.
 
Get one of your wife's cardboard nail files (don't all wives have some?) and use it to "shine up" the wires. Make sure to twist them, too, so that you get good heat conductance through ALL the wires. Then add a touch of solder to your tip to help with the initial heating, and apply your solder to the wire from the opposite side of the tip...
 
Thanks guys -- your messages earlier plus that dandy video did the trick.

Solder works great now that I've heated the pins up that I wanted to solder...

It was all new materials -- new wire, new connector so it wasn't oxidized, I just didn't know the basics.

I still barely do but after reading your messages and watching the video I went back out to the garage and did the remaining soldering (fairly neatly) and with 100x less effort than before.

I'm still a ways away from trying to solder/unsolder on a board; right now I'm just trying to get the basics down and worked on soldering wires together and soldering wires to the tail end of a header (yeah, I know, I'm not supposed to do that).
 
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