In the beginning
After graduating with a Degree in Electronics. I did not expect to be soldering so much. My first brush with electronics was discovering my Dad’s electronic kit for a Radio. My first brush with soldering was being a junior member the School’s Electronics Club. The only significant event I could remember was holding a Chinese-made Soldering Iron which literally blew up in my hands minutes later. That and the fun I had with made in Hong Kong FM Mikes that were housed in a plastic cigarette box before learning about frequency drift and also, tweeters were directional. It was fun and eventually, things and assumptions resulted in me being an Engineer despite halfway through, I discovered I wanted to be an Industrial Designer. I realised this after being awarded an A++ (highest in the class) for a Term Project in designing a concept product.
To be honest, I was never much into electronics but it all changed one Wednesday afternoon in the early-90’s….
It was for the very first time I watched Star Trek the Next Generation and this prop, the Mk VII Tricorder’s sequential LEDs got me hooked.
Fast forward decades later, I started to solder a little more seriously. Although it was less during my Day Job but more on my Hobby. And therefore, this was where I started to more or less hone in on that particular skill set. There are some notes that will be controversial but at that formative period, there was no one I could share about my questions and challenges. Right or wrong, as long as the soldering is good, I am happy with it. In this page, I am going to share with you the tools I used for this Hobby. And yes, although it is simple, I am still developing the electronics for that Tricorder…
| The Tools | Circuit Design | Software Solution |
| Soldering Iron | Basic Electronics | PCB Software |
| Soldering Iron Stand | Circuit Design | Chip Programming |
| Soldering Iron Maintenance | LED Calculation | MPLab & PICStart Plus |
| Solder | Types of LEDs | Arduino |
| How to Solder | Troubleshooting | |
| How to De-solder | ||
| Hand Tools | ||
| Power Supply | ||
| Wires | ||
| Heat-shrinking |
Cutter
Tweezers
Desoldering Pump
Desoldering Braid
3M Double-sided Tape
IPA
Power Supplies
Crocodile Clips
Magnifying Lamp
Mask
Heat-shrink
Circuit Design, Basic Electronics, Calculations
Prototyping, Stripboards, PCB, Manufacturing
Microcontrollers, Flowcode, trouble-shooting, issues
31AWG Wires
