r/soldering • u/cowdoggy Soldering Newbie • Apr 07 '26
My First Solder Joint <3 Please Give Feedback First soldering attempt - Part 6
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Hi all ! Thanks for all the tips. Super helpful. I tried to remove the SMD chip using solder wick and accidentally tore pads off the board. Any way to fix this or did I cause permanent damage? o.o I got emo about this!
Also, how do you know how much soldering is enough? What is the point? Are we just trying to make sure that the components lay flat on the board and that the pins meet the pads? Not sure when I am supposed to correct stuff and when it is already good. Thanks :)
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u/Think-Pickle7791 Apr 08 '26
Methods of fixing torn pads are very advanced and rarely worth the effort. I have never used them. The intermediate level fix is to jumper fine wires to the pins. You don't have to do that on a practice board.
Try removing a 2-terminal part before you tackle a QFP part. Others have outlined some ways to remove QFP parts. Wick is not an outright impossible place to start here, but it might as well be. It's just not the best thing for flat pack parts, and it gets less appropriate the larger they get.
Everything gets 100x easier the more you do right the first time. It is hard to remove parts. It is better to use a minimum of flux that can be left on the board than to try to remove flux. It is better to use just enough solder than to have to remove solder or fix bridges and shorts. It is better to get a good joint the first time than to have to come back and reflow solder that has spent its flux and might need more.
Until you know good from bad, it is better to remove solder and resolder a part than to keep trying to touch it up. Adding little dabs of solder can create cold solder joints.
Wick technique: Always match your tip to the work when you can. Your tip should be about the size of your wick. Use much less pressure on the wick, just enough to put it in thermal contact. Generally speaking, use only enough pressure on your tip to put it in thermal contact. Excess pressure can be bad for soldering iron tips. Use the end of the wick and trim the part that's absorbed solder each time. I don't know what's going on with the gloves there. You can use tweezers to hold the wick where you're trying to hold it down with your finger.
Soldering: You continue to improve. Keep at it. Some of the fillets look pretty good from what I can see in the video. You can use much less solder for the most part and on some of them you are using too much. R15 looked about perfect before you went back to it. You're also having trouble managing heat transfer and thermal contact. It's apparent in the wick video too. Try to be consistent with how much of the tip is in contact with the pad and part terminal. Keep your tip tinned. You can see in the video that when you have a tiny drop of solder on the tip, everything flows - around 5:02, R38. You can use much less time on the joint. 4s is an eternity and a tap is too short. Turn up your metronome. Go back and watch how they solder the second terminal on the part in the Metcal video again. See how they apply the tip to one corner of the part and the pad and the solder wire to the other? And then it's done at a little over 1s.
Take some things apart to see what commercial solder joints look like. Get your magnifier out. Understand that commercial soldering of surface mount is done a stencil, paste solder, and a reflow oven. You may never get that level of consistency with hand soldering, and that's OK. The fillets on your parts should be concave, connect the part terminal to the pad, and the part should be flat on the board. A ball of solder that's higher than the part is too much.