Learn to Solder: Tools and Techniques for Assembling Electronics

Learn the fundamentals of soldering--and pick up an essential skill for building electronic gadgets. You'll discover how to preheat and tin your iron, make a good solder joint, desolder cleanly (when things don't quite go right), and how to use helping hands to hold components in place.

This concise book is part of MAKE's Getting Started with Soldering Kit. Using the tools in the kit and some electronic components, you can practice soldering while making fun blinky objects. Then show the world you just learned a new skill by wearing the Learn to Solder Skill Badge.

• Learn how to prepare your workspace
• Get to know the components you'll work with
• Use the best methods for soldering components in place
• Experience the perfect solder joint
• Know how to desolder when things don't work the first time

Heat up the iron and start soldering today

Brian Jepson is an O'Reilly editor, hacker, and co-organizer of Providence Geeks and the Rhode Island Mini Maker Faire. He's also a geek-at-large for AS220, a non-profit arts center in Providence, Rhode Island. AS220 gives Rhode Island artists uncensored and unjuried forums for their work and also provides galleries, performance space, fabrication facilities, and live/work space.

Tyler Moskowite, a programmer, engineering intern at Make Magazine, and student at Santa Rosa Junior College, has been tinkering with electronics for almost half his life. He picked up Arduino, then Android, and with the release of the ADK he has found his niche.

As a photographer for Make Magazine, Gregory Hayes has ruined more clothes than he ever did as a handyman, hiked more miles with a heavier load than he did as a backpacker, done more research than he did as a writer, and gotten closer to more human hands than advised by any epidemiologist. Taught to solder at the age of seven and forced to solder for his supper at the age of nine, he's now content to let others enjoy the lion's share while he stands by watching safely from behind glass.