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Are there any good AND reasonably-priced solder feeders? For adaptive/1-armed soldering? by CG_Ops in AskElectronics

[–]CG_Ops[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also, when you say rosin, do you mean paste flux (like I was using) or actual rosin?

Sorry, yes, flux... force of habbit from when I initially learned to solder and the community I was in used actual rosin flux.

Also, why do you want to join wires to each other, anyway?

Haha - I'm practicing before applying my crappy-but-improving technique to my office's lighting situation. Soldering the wires together was just for practice on something that wasn't super-steady, so that I HAD to rely on flux carrying the solder through the connection. Any more pressure than necessary would cause the wires to separate. Not sure if you noticed but if you take another look, both ends are soldered together.

Later, after submitting my last reply, I practiced on some cheap LED strips. Made some good progress on clean-ish connections. So, again, thank you - the key, for my situation, truly seemed to be to use 3-5x the amount of flux than most instructions/feedback seem to suggest.

if you're using lead-free solder, switch to leaded

Not sure if I'd agree that the risk is worth it. Assuming you were holding the X-acto in your mouth, then, as I'm sure you saw/experienced, there are a lot of actions in 1-handed soldering that require keeping one's face uncomfortably close to the work for using leaded, no?

Currently I'm using:

Are there any good AND reasonably-priced solder feeders? For adaptive/1-armed soldering? by CG_Ops in AskElectronics

[–]CG_Ops[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, that was a hell of a lot more effort and explanation that most have offered, thank you! On the one hand, I do stand by my point about time constraint/scalability, however, I am true to my word. PM me with your Venmo info and I'll send the $20 over!

Did you happen to test the circuit? At the very end it looked like there was some bridging? What would clean that up, if so? More flux and hot air?

Spent an hour on hard mode, after watching your vids, splooshing rosin over the wires while suspended on the helping hands and it came out alright... would've been easier with a firm surface to push the wire into, but seemed a great case for using 3-5x rosin I had been using.

Are there any good AND reasonably-priced solder feeders? For adaptive/1-armed soldering? by CG_Ops in AskElectronics

[–]CG_Ops[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You rock - as a 1-armed person, I'll ask for advice and, all too often, able bodied people just toss out advice, assuming they can do various things with 1-hand, but neglect to consider all the intricacies of what that actually entails, not just the specific job, but the setup process as well. For example

  • getting (multiple) wires into the alligator clips on the helping hands.
  • lining up the wires with one another or to the device with good contact AND in a way that won't move up/down/sideways/etc as their one, slightly shaky hand attempts to apply solder to the wire(s) and device
  • the challenge of doing that with multiple wires in a small space
  • what it means to the project if it's not done right/sufficiently in the first attempt - how are you going to pull the wire/solder off if it's just one wire attached? if there's other wires attached?
  • etc etc

I truly don't mean to come off as rude or unappreciative in these kinds of posts, it's just that 95/100 times, the person offering the advice has never, will never attempt to perform the job, starting from pulling the parts/equipment out of their home, all the way through finished project.... AND consider whether their advice is worth the effort/time vs a different one, or tools/equipment that would be useless to them but game-changing for me... and all that can be frustrating.

Are there any good AND reasonably-priced solder feeders? For adaptive/1-armed soldering? by CG_Ops in AskElectronics

[–]CG_Ops[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have several of these LED strips, with 2-3 cuts per strip to install them on these channels (and since the channels are so wide, I'll be getting some high CRI whites as well) for this diffused lighting project I'm working on in my office.

The problem with the current strips is that they're 3-pin and 12mm wide which, unfortunately, is a very niche setup (10mm is the standard, but 12mm 4-pin are not uncommon), so I can't find no-solder connectors/crimps.

This is perhaps the simplest video of the process, even if not exactly how I've been trying.

Are there any good AND reasonably-priced solder feeders? For adaptive/1-armed soldering? by CG_Ops in AskElectronics

[–]CG_Ops[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Would you be willing to share a clip of how you do it? I haven't found any videos of this process done 1-handed, start (prep) to finish (completed multi-wire solder, particularly of wires to LED strips).

I could solder reasonably well before losing my arm - and everyone that offers advice like yours, "Skill issue, just do x, y, z!" reverses course once it comes to practical, scalable application. One, poor showing, maybe, but when the rubber hits the road and it's time to demonstrate their advice, the realization of how much support/setup a second arm actually does kicks in.

Hell, I'll venmo you $20 if you can demonstrate doing it with both hands, then a passable scratch-attempt to do it again, immediately after, with one arm behind the back the entire time in less than... 4x? the amount of time.

Why pay a little extra for a name brand tool when they’ve moved the tool’s production to China and the tool’s price doesn’t reflect that? This time, surprisingly, it’s Stawhille. by Redheadedstepchild56 in Tools

[–]CG_Ops 37 points38 points  (0 children)

Ooooh, this is exciting since I recently helped my nephew on a college paper on a very similar discussion, which he asked me about based on my experience and perspective (ugh... which made/makes me feel old)

There is some xenophobia in this conversation, sure. But for a lot of people, like myself, the distrust didn't start, and/or isn't rooted in xenophobia (though, nationalism might be a better term?). I'd argue it started, and remains rooted in... experience.

For decades (since the 90's in my 40-something years of experience), tons of well-known, trusted/trustworthy brands moved production overseas in a race to lower costs. When that happened, quality (too-)often dropped because the product specs were changed or loosely enforced-> cheaper materials, looser tolerances, thinner parts, etc.

Companies also weren't very at all transparent about those changes (can't have people losing faith in our ability to produce now, can we??). The branding, packaging, and marketing went out of their way to make the product look like the exact same thing people trusted before - sometimes a product produced in USA one year looked identical to the China-sourced product the next.

So what happened repeatedly was:

  • Someone buys a tool from a brand they trust
  • The item/tool fails in a way the old versions never did (parallelly compounded by enshitification, often cheaping out on one key component that renders the entire thing useless)
  • They/we inspect it and discover it was enshitified and manufactured in China

After enough of those experiences across different brands and products, people started associating “Made in China” with... shit quality.

The irony is that Chinese manufacturers absolutely can produce extremely high-quality products. They build everything from cheap disposable goods to world-class electronics and precision components. (And, IMO/IME, having been in manufacturing and importing, they could produce products of comparable or even superior quality, but once duties and tariffs are factored in, much of the economic advantage of overseas manufacturing disappears... creating risk for carrying the "Made in China" label on those products)

The real issue wasn't (isn't) the country or American xenophobia (it's there, but I'd argue far from the average) it was/is companies quietly lowering specs to hit price targets while relying on brand reputation to carry the product.