How to go about soldering 144 LED/m strips together

Other Hardware General Electronics
1

Hello! So I got this awesome RGBW LED strip, and finally got it working thanks to a thread I had a while ago related to powering it, but me being the genius I am I tried bending it in half for a project and broke the middle solder connection (since it's manufactured in 0.5m strips and I got 1m).

My question is, how the heck do I get it back together?? I've read all the tutorials on doing this but they're all with much bigger pads and wider spaced LEDs, whereas the pads I have to work with are just a couple mm long and the LEDs are right up against them.

I've already butchered one LED (might still be functional so haven't cut it off yet) just trying to get solder to stick to that end, and I always end up with either it not sticking due to the pad not being hot enough, things around it starting to melt/char due to it being too hot, or creating a bridge between the pad and the closet LED terminal since they're literally less than a millimeter apart. How do I get myself out of this pickle???

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2

The OP's picture:-

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Start by removing all the solder with solder braid.

Then butt the two strips together and fix then with a bit of Gorilla tape on the back. Use a scalpel to trim away excess tape leaving none of the sticky side exposed over the tape.

Then take a piece of 28 gauge wire and bend the end at right angles about 0.1 inch from the end.

Put the wire so that it is touching both pads and apply a little solder to a fine tip and apply the tip to the wire. Trim off the wire with a good set of side cutters.

Repeat for the other two wires.

3

It looks like a pad or two might have torn off the right side of the strip. If so, you're probably better off just cutting that LED off.

4

Are you using flux?

5

+1 for cutting the damaged LED off. Leave as much of the copper pad as possible. Tape the ends like GM said, apply flux and solder. Apply the solder to the bare pad first to tin them and then join the ends. Suport the solder joint so the it cannot be bent, solder is very brittle.