About Soldering Your Eggfinder…
Assembling your Eggfinder isn’t that hard, but we recommend that you don’t choose it as your
first kit project. You must be able to solder small components using fine solder and get nice
shiny solder joints. If you have never soldered before, you need to learn anyway, because if
you are going to do rocketry electronics you’re going to be doing some soldering. If you want
to get into advanced projects like telemetry, you’re probably going to be doing a lot of
soldering. We recommend that you get a few small kits from Ramsey or SparkFun, put them
together, and hone your skills on them first. There’s a lot of fun stuff out there, so go for it!
The Eggfinder uses a few Surface Mount Technology (SMT) parts, they are large by SMT
standards, and are within the realm of being hand-solderable. In our case, there are two
“modules”, the GPS module and the RF module, that could potentially be damaged by the heat
of surface-mounting them in an oven; that’s why we chose to have you solder them. In order
to help make your assembly successful, we have included about 12” of very fine (.020”), very
low temperature (about 180°C), no-residue solder. This is not the stuff that you get at Radio
Shack… it’s designed for soldering small temperature-sensitive parts without transferring
much heat to the part itself.
Important Note: DO NOT use any kind of extra flux with this board. There is no reason
for it because the parts are new and clean, and any flux that you buy is almost certainly going
to be incompatible with the flux in the no-clean solder. Extra flux just makes a mess, and may
require excessive heat in order to boil off the flux, possibly damaging the sensitive components
in the kit.
For soldering components on a board like the Eggfinder, we recommend a small pencil
soldering iron, about 15W. If you are only going to use it occasionally, Weller makes a decent
cheap 12W iron, it’s about $15. There is also a similar iron that’s sold by ECG. We like those,
but the copper tips seem to oxidize and corrode rather quickly compared to some more
expensive irons; fortunately, the tips are replaceable and cheap. Better would be a fancier
soldering pencil with iron tips; those run about $30, but they’ll last forever. The best iron
would be a temperature-controlled solder station, they typically start at about $50 for a cheap
one and can go to a few hundred dollars if you want to get really fancy. Weller makes a good
one for about $50, if you make the investment that will probably be the last soldering iron you
will ever need to buy. These solder stations usually have a little well with a tip-cleaning
sponge, so they end up taking less room on your workstation too. Get the smallest tip you can
find, preferably with a conical tip that’s about the same width as the smallest pad.
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