Review on 🔥 Gikfun Soldering Training Practice for Welding by Brandon Vox

If you want to try SMD soldering, I strongly recommend that you have a temperature programmable soldering station and a microscope. Read my experience with this set below and you will see that I did it with a magnifying headband. It's possible, but a microscope would make this project a lot more bearable. Just make sure the microscope head is far enough away from the board for you to stick your soldering iron in! I bought the red version of this model last year and totally ruined it; I tried soldering components the same way I soldered THT (through the hole) components. Tiny components in the kit stuck to my iron, or I tried soldering them to the pad for so long I burned them completely. . I decided to try this blue option to try myself again. This one turned out to be better, and the functional diagram of the LED works. If you don't have a microscope, this set is a damn effective workout! That level seemed like the bare minimum to me, every minor increase, and I couldn't see clearly what I was doing. But since I wore a headband to see, I had to lean forward over my rotary workstation's toolbox to focus. So if you don't have a microscope, use a headband like I did. A magnifying glass will put your face dangerously close to the soldering iron and you could get solder spatter in your other eye. Even with my headband I got a few sniffs of soldering fumes so once again a microscope with enough room for your soldering iron is highly recommended! I disassembled the components by reading the values on the resistors and comparing the number of components that came with the kit to the parts and accessories list that came with the instructions, which hastily included a SMD soldering guide, but contains only a few assembly instructions for this kit. After figuring everything out, I soldered the "extra" components to the training pads. There are a lot of pads, so you'll get a lot of practice here. I then soldered the components to the functional part of the board, soldered the wires to the + and - pins, and voila! My project is on fire! The finished product is simple in aesthetics and functionality, leaving only the person who soldered this kit to enjoy seeing this light. As such, I would only recommend this kit if you want a solid SMD soldering experience beyond formal training. With the right gear and experience, this kit isn't all that difficult, but I wouldn't call it easy either!