New here. I cannot do this. I literally cannot solder this Arduino Nano. I strip the oxide off my fine-tip probe on my soldering iron until the whole tip is shiny copper. I try a variety of different solders - rosin core 60/40, high tin, etc etc. I just can't do this. I can't even reach the pad when there's a wire or pin poking through the hole, they're just too tiny and the pin or wire blocks the way. I touch the pin, it never heats up enough to melt the solder. I just cannot do this. I can't even decently solder the wires to the pins of my 1 pole 5 position switch when it's not sticking through the Arduino - I can, with like 5 minutes of work, get a not-great solder connection on the outermost pin, with 10 minutes an even worse one on the next pin, and just nothing after that. It's all just too small and close together and I just cannot get sufficient accuracy, isolation, or heating. I have experience soldering macroscopic things, but I just cannot handle these microscopic ones.
Are there any alternatives to soldering connections to the Arduino? I can literally just stick the pins of my switch in a proper order from GND through D5 and bend them, they match perfectly, and they sort of hold themselves in position, but without soldering the pins to the Arduino, there's nothing actually securing it.
No flux, but given that I can hardly even point at a single pin without touching others, either with the iron or the solder, I'm not sure how much that would help even if it helped with the heat transfer itself. Also, when I've seen people talking about flux, there's usually comments about how the lead-free stuff sucks, and I'm not about to lead poison myself for an arduino project.
I also see people recommend helping hands, but everything involved here is so tiny that there's no way you could attach helping hands to it (you could have them hold the arduino or the switch or the wire, each from a distance, but not the actual connection point - so for example if I'm trying to solder a wire to a pin, it's still going to be as loose as a hair hanging atop a nail, and here I am trying to touch a handheld iron longer than my hand against it)
I've also seen people talking about "tinning the soldering iron". That's not what happens when I touch solder to the iron, it just melts and runs off - it doesn't stick around the iron.
Are there any non-soldering options? For example, male and female connectors that fit snugly?
Wow, Ive been going through soldering hell. I thought it was just me. I’m using a Hakko FX888DX soldering station. The first time I used it everything went smooth. I tried is again a year or two later and I couldn't solder to save my life. Here is what I found.
There is a soldering gun calibration procedure. Easy to do, just read the manual, mine was way off.
Cheep soldering iron tips from china, no good. I picked up some genuine Hakko tips, much better. If you have a Hakko, get Hakko tips. If you have a Weller, get Weller tips. Etc
a clean tip and plenty of flux is your friend. I’m still trying to figure out how to clean off the flux but at least I got it soldered nicely. I don’t believe you should see copper on your tip. Mine have a silver colored plating.
Find the hot spot on your tip. There will be one spot that is hotter then the rest.
High quality 60/40 rosin core solder, Kester or Radio Shack is best but on a budget I find Miniatronics to be high quality: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0006O933K. What you’re looking for is solder with a rosin core and made specifically for electronics.
In my opinion 60/40 is the only way to go, it is much easier to solder with. You are not going to get poisoned with lead unless you eat it or fail to wash your hands after soldering and eat with your hands, and repeat about a million times. There is a lot of hype about lead=bad but lead is the good stuff. Just my opinion.
If your soldering iron does not have a tip that is conical and fairly small point, and does not have such a replacement tip available, you may need a different soldering iron. But with a steady hand and practice even a somewhat fat tip can be used.
I got some tip tinner, and that stuff works quite well. It renews the soldering iron tip and makes it very shiny and conductive of heat. Just fantastic. I will admit the fumes stink extra, use with good ventilation. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIB9PBE?th=1
Lots of good advice already in this thread, from faster typists than me. I started typing when you were still new here, ha!
And finally to actually answer the question, an Uno has female dupont headers and you can get a breadboard and dupont wires that just plug in. Or you can get Nanos that already have the headers soldered on, and just plug the nano into the breadboard. And plug your sensors or components into the breadboard. There’s a lot you can do with no soldering, but you will be limited in what you can do with absolutely no soldering skills, so it’s still a good idea to get practice and get good at it. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09VKYLYN7
Your soldering iron tip should be iron covering the copper. Copper will oxidize almost immediately when heated and then it will not be wetted by the molten solder, just as you describe.
Get a new tip for the soldering iron. You should have several of differing size and shape, anyway.
That rather suggests you have stripped it too far and stuffed it. Time for a new bit, perhaps.
Three things I have learned of late.
Get rid of that old 1.25mm capalloy solder and get shiny new 0.71mm. It's plain 60/40 but I suspect the thinner solder doesn't conduct the heat away so much, and that helps.
Keep the tip CLEAN. A wipe on a damp kitchen sponge is probably all that is needed
If you want to know what a gift from God looks like, check out a flux dispensing pen. I didn't know they existed until a few days ago. It is now clear that God works at U2 14 Lee Holm Road, St Mary's NSW 2760.
You must tin the bit before trying to solder anything, having a small amount of solder on the end of the bit is essential because it helps transfer the heat to whatever you are soldering. If you cannot tin the bit as you describe then it's not clean. You can get little pots of solder paste for tinning a soldering iron bit. For cleaning I use a stainless steel wire wool pad available from a supermarket for not much.
As for types of solder lead is slightly easier to use than lead free. You are not going to poison yourself with lead solder unless you eat it, and I'm sure you are not going to do that.
I’d recommend you to get an old broken PCB, with holes and pins, change your soldering iron tip, get a flux (any type, preferably not hard) and PRACTICE soldering/unsoldering components from that PCB.
I love the fact that I'm being told in this thread that I need to clean my tip better, that I'm overcleaning it, that I shouldn't let the copper be exposed, and that I should heat it until the copper starts burning off (green flame). :Ăž
At least there's one thing discovered last night, is that while solder beads on the tip when I touch it instead of wetting the tip, if I then subsequently rub it with steel wool after that, it will then wet the tip, and that does help a lot (I have to do this every time, though).
