Extreme Soldering

[renderman]

So at Shmoocon I set a new personal high (or low, depending) hack.

While watching the superbowl with everyone in the lobby bar on Sunday while waiting out the snow in DC, I wanted to keep myself occupied. Fortunately I packed along some projects that have been piling up to tinker with. After futzing around with kismet drones for a bit on a routerstation on one of the tables, I hit an impass and moved on.

I brought down the soldering iron and a TV-B-Gone kit from Adafruit and setup.

Dragorn and others figured it would end badly with me getting kicked out or something. I sat there for the next 2 hours of the game building the thing in the bar. To everyones amazement, even my own no one said a word. Dragorn did make the valid point of not testing it in the last moments of the game as there were more sports fans than there were of me and they would likely kill me.

Pics soon, but it made me think, what other 'extreme soldering' have people done? In the vein of extreme ironing, we may have to start this as a new sport!

[charliex]

Re: Extreme Soldering

0603 US with a normal iron and no magnifier I'd guess, while a bunch of impatient people breathing down my neck saying this better work..

Done a few crazy things like using a butane iron to solder to live mains.

[bombnav]

Re: Extreme Soldering

My extreme exp: Sitting in the lower deck of a B-52 bomber getting ready to launch with engines running soldering 40 year old wires back on a 1960 relay. Estimated temp in the cabin was 100+. Sweat sizzles when it hits a hot iron.

[sintax_error]

Re: Extreme Soldering

Mine has to be out somewhere on the I-15 between LA and Vegas, at around 3am or so. Headlights go away, not cool; It was a fuse, and of course I had none. Broke out the inverter, slapped a bridge made of my old headphones onto the damn thing, and voila! let there be light.

[valkyrie]

Re: Extreme Soldering

Mine has to be out somewhere on the I-15 between LA and Vegas, at around 3am or so. Headlights go away, not cool; It was a fuse, and of course I had none. Broke out the inverter, slapped a bridge made of my old headphones onto the damn thing, and voila! let there be light.

Now THAT just made little shivers run all up and down my leg...

Regards,

valkyrie
__________________________________________________ ____________________
sapere aude

[streaker69]

Re: Extreme Soldering

Now THAT just made little shivers run all up and down my leg...

Regards,

valkyrie
__________________________________________________ ____________________
sapere aude

Yeah, cause a real redneck would have used a .22LR

[valkyrie]

Re: Extreme Soldering

Yeah, cause a real redneck would have used a .22LR

You remembered that Darwin Award! :-) /me wonders if that guy ever had a neutical implant to replace his left nut...

regards,

valkyrie
__________________________________________________ _____
sapere aude

[sintax_error]

Re: Extreme Soldering

Yeah, cause a real redneck would have used a .22LR

89 Jeep Cherokee; Wouldn't fit. And trust me, that was not by far the most redneck thing ever done to that vehicle. But Render, I gotta ask... were you using a butane, or otherwise self powered iron? or Did you actually find an outlet and just go for it? Either way that's pretty ballsy. Shit I can't even smoke in most bars.

[Thorn]

Re: Extreme Soldering

89 Jeep Cherokee; Wouldn't fit. And trust me, that was not by far the most redneck thing ever done to that vehicle. But Render, I gotta ask... were you using a butane, or otherwise self powered iron? or Did you actually find an outlet and just go for it? Either way that's pretty ballsy. Shit I can't even smoke in most bars.

There were outlets built into the table. The hotel bar is geared for business users with laptops, so outlets are plentiful. Of course, our crowd was pushing that particular envelope...

The fun part was watching Render try to use the ice from his drink to wet the station's sponge. He finally gave up and stuffed the whole sponge into his glass.

[DCFluX]

Re: Extreme Soldering

My latest trick is surface mount soldering using open flame with a butane pencil torch. The reasoning is my hot air gun takes like 2-3 minutes to come to temperature and I also wanted a portable hot air surface mount solution.

As long as you keep the torch far enough off the board so the flux doesn't catch fire and you don't scorch the board it works just fine. As an added bonus it makes component salvage a snap, just melt the solder, tap the board upside down and the components fall out.

As for extreme situations, I wouldn't call it extreme, more like grossly non-safe, I had to remove a car stereo ignition interlock from a Volkswagen Cabriolet. There was no way to get crimpers under the dash board to do a butt splice and there was only like 1 inch of slack on these wires. This car was so small to the point where I had to sit in the seat inverted with my legs hanging over the head rest to get my head under the dash and see what I'm doing. This put me in the position that the wires were 8" directly above my face, all I could think was please don't let this shit splash on me.

[charliex]

Re: Extreme Soldering

I see that its most of us who help to teach others to solder, do the craziest things :)

[DCFluX]

Re: Extreme Soldering

If just one person learns from my mistakes, I feel I've accomplished a lifetime of work.

[renderman]

Re: Extreme Soldering

There were outlets built into the table. The hotel bar is geared for business users with laptops, so outlets are plentiful. Of course, our crowd was pushing that particular envelope...

The fun part was watching Render try to use the ice from his drink to wet the station's sponge. He finally gave up and stuffed the whole sponge into his glass.

It was a Hakko soldering station. A nice variable, common as dirt one that I picked up a while ago. As Thorn said, the tables were rigged for lots of AC power, so no problem there, though I don't think they meant it for soldering.

Yeah, I grabbed a few ice cubes from my drink to wet the sponge but that took to long, so after a while I dunked the sponge in the (now finished) drink, so there was probably some gin in there too.

EDIT: Pics uploading now, but I'm sure that others took some too

[barry99705]

Re: Extreme Soldering

It was a Hakko soldering station. A nice variable, common as dirt one that I picked up a while ago. As Thorn said, the tables were rigged for lots of AC power, so no problem there, though I don't think they meant it for soldering.

Yeah, I grabbed a few ice cubes from my drink to wet the sponge but that took to long, so after a while I dunked the sponge in the (now finished) drink, so there was probably some gin in there too.

EDIT: Pics uploading now, but I'm sure that others took some too

Damn! I missed out on the fun... I wish the airport gates had as many outlets as the hotel's bar.

[Thorn]

Re: Extreme Soldering

Damn! I missed out on the fun... I wish the airport gates had as many outlets as the hotel's bar.

Speaking of the airport, are you home finally?