How do you soder the legs on a LCD screen without cross sodering the legs? I get the gist but is there a technice I should know to not have the soder pools touch.
Use thin diameter solder, and practice. One pad at a time.
We use the thinnest diameter available
Solder braid (also called solder wick) is great for removing excess solder if you do accidentally make a bridge.
Or a solder sucker.
The bottom one is used at our house.
What sort of connector are you soldering? If it's an SMD connector, look up drag soldering.
Are you using a crappy soldering iron? Cheap soldering irons often run too hot, causing the flux to burn off before a joint can be made, allowing the solder to oxidize; this makes it more difficult to work with.
Adding no-clean gel flux (that's the search term to use) can help (and is essential for drag soldering).
Always clean the iron tip, always wet the tip in fresh solder immediately before use, extra flux is a good idea,
don't use too much solder, temperature controlled iron is way way better than one without...
If the temperature of the iron is right joints will be made quickly but without scorching/burning.
Spots of solder paste and a hot air gun have worked well for me .
Allan
Robert-Proaps:
How do you soder the legs on a LCD screen without cross sodering the legs? I get the gist but is there a technice I should know to not have the soder pools touch.
If you have solder bridges, there is a simple way to not only remove them, but also get really nice looking solder joints (but it takes a bit of practice to get it right).
Take your spool of solder and glob a LOT onto each pin. If some of them short together, don't worry about it. In fact, it works better when they ARE globbed together.
Next, hold your board so that the row of pins is vertical (that is, one end points to the floor and the other end points at the ceiling).
Then put your soldering iron onto the TOP connection, wait for the solder to melt. You will see the drop glob "slide" down to the next connection. Let THAT guide you. As each drop slides down, follow it with your soldering iron tip.
You may draw off enough solder to have a drop fall off the iron onto the floor.... don't worry about that. Just keep following the drop down until it "slides" off the last pin.
At the end, you will probably have a decent sized drop of wasted solder on the tip of your iron... just dispose of it as usual.
What you are trying to accomplish is to have gravity suck solder off the terminals, and have molten solder surface tension keep some solder on the terminals.
As you get more skilled at doing this, you will find that the angle you hold the board will control how much solder remains on the terminals due to surface tension.
For example, if you hold the board at a 45 degree angle and slide the iron tip down, you have less effect from gravity, but the same effect from surface tension and therefore you leave a little more solder on each connection.
At first, it's scary... intentionally globbing excess solder onto the pins and shorting them all together, but as soon as you "wipe" off the excess with this method, you will see how nicely it turns out.
Try practicing on a scrap board first.. it won't take long for you to "get" the idea how it works and get the feel for it.
What you are doing is really replicating what "wave soldering" does (or I should say "did") when it was used to solder boards.
Good luck!
(edit to add): Look what DrAzzy said about "drag soldering". What I described above really is "drag soldering", but on (relatively) large connections rather than microscopic IC pins. If it works on IC pins (which it does), imagine how nicely it works on larger stuff.