Learn About Soldering Iron & Equipment for Circuit Bending

Video Transcript

AMANDA CLAIRE: All right, you're going to need a soldering iron and, like I've mentioned briefly, there are few different kinds; actually, there's a lot of different kinds. One thing about soldering iron is that usually their tips are interchangeable. This is kind of a cheap one, there's a Phillips head here and I can take that tip out and change it if it gets kind of old or cruddy, and you probably don't need to change the tip of the soldering iron too often. This one? Yup, this one changes and this whole thing kind of slides out and slides back in, so they do have interchangeable tips. Sometimes you might want to use it larger tip or smaller tip. The other difference in soldering iron is that there are some that have heat control, like this one. You see there's a variable heat control knob here, where you can get it super-duper hot, or you can get it just, kind of, you know, medium hot or less hot. The entire range of heat that the soldering iron gets at is probably dangerous; it can burn you. So don't think just because you have it set low, that you can't get burnt, you know. It sort of a difference between a second-degree burn or a third-degree burn, right? But something like this is really handy and has variable heat control, and on/off switch. The base kind of has the iron holder right in it. It has a little reservoir here, we even put a sponge. This sponge, this is one of those dehydrated sponges. So, I haven't put water in it yet, but it's nice to have a wet sponge around to kind of clean and solder off your iron when you're working. So, some of these are kind of nice, really nice setups are kinda set up like that. But you don't necessarily need to have something like this; I mean you can work just with a regular soldering iron like this. If you do, remember you need to have some kind of little stand for it. This is kind of a crummy one; you might want to look into maybe getting a better stand. This is, you know, kind of easy for it to fall off it a bit. But note it, this iron doesn't have a variable heat control, so you plug it in and the temperature it gets is the temperature it is. And so, and then, last but not the least, just remember kind of, the safety issues with soldering irons. I mean they're very hot, very quickly they can burn you instantly. They can burn your friend instantly, when you're going, "Hey man check out what I just made?" and then you kind of don't think about where your iron is and you burn their eye out or something. And obviously you use the stand to, kind of, keep it from burning your table and just kind of keep it safe. But, yeah, soldering irons, you need one but there's different options out there, but as long as it's a soldering iron that's made for electronics, and they almost all are, and then you'll be in pretty good shape.

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