trying my first build and wanted to get some confidence and confirmation from you guys that I’m doing everything correctly. I’m trying to keep everything very simple for my first build. it’s a korbanth graflex 2.0 (gold-plated). got it for a good price off a reseller and thought it’d be a good first build. installing with a proffie 3.9 and a chassis I printed from an stl by another builder made for the same inner core.
again, keeping it as simple as possible, I’m going one-button, one blade, no accents, no kill-switch.
Here’s my plan:
button: go to the ground and button 1 tab
pcb: pre-soldered and has negative, positive, and unlabeled (data?)
-negative goes to LED2 and LED 3 pads
-I’m going to do positive to positive battery contact
-unlabeled (data)
Battery negative contact: goes to ground tab
Battery positive contact: goes to Batt+ tab (and positive pcb wire as stated above)
Speaker: both go to speaker tabs (no real difference in positive/negative, correct?
I have a simple config to start just to make sure everything works. I’ll past that here. I don’t need to add anything to SD card except folders for fonts, correct? and tracks if I want them. no config or prop info or anything?
I think I’m ready to delve into the soldering. a little nervous. wish I had an extra board on hand. let me know if I’m making any mistakes or any last minute advice.
thanks everyone on here for always being so willing to help. it’s been a great hobby to get into. never thought I’d be building my own, simple as it may be.
Also what length is your blade?
The 144 seems like it will be too long.
In my experience for a 26" blade it’s 95, for a 32" blade it’s 115, and for a 36" blade it’s 129.
Not trying to spam this thread but thought I should mention that the unlabeled wire you talked about should be data and that your current config has it going to data1.
If you decide to use a different data pad you will need to change bladePin to blade2Pin, blade3Pin, or blade4Pin.
Edit:
The number corresponds to the data pad number.
thanks. someone told me at one point that I might as well just stick the maximum on there if I have edit mode anyways. I don’t know why. I don’t have any blades longer than 36". I normally just edit blade length from the hilt, depending on the size of whatever nearby blade I happen to stick in. it’d save me some time to not have the entire 144 on there. thanks for taking a look for me.
Absolutely not spamming. I appreciate you taking the time to have a look and offer advice. I was planning on data1, so I should have indicated. good to know that it does have to be on 1 for future builds, though. thanks.
thanks for the clarification on batt-. that’s where I pictured it going. for some reason, I thought that pad and the one next to it were both labeled as ground.
I picked up a magnification lamp yesterday. I was thinking the same thing. my 40+ old man eyes aren’t what they used to be, haha.
I did get an iron with temp. controls. is 350 C the correct temp? it also has a couple arms with clamps that I thought would help. are there safe and unsafe places to clamp the board? will I maybe damage it by using them?
I would grab on the edges (the pads) not on any components on the board, some should not be “compressed”.
On my clamps, I used some transparent shrink wrap to decrease the “aggressiveness” of the teeth on the pads to avoid scratching the surfaces.
If memory serve (my 52y old man memory) that seems quite high (662° F) but it depends on your solder type, your soldering technique and what kind of wires you will be using. At 350° C you will probably melt the insulation unless you are very quick.
I am no expert, I don’t solder often and I solder slowly, I can check tomorrow at what temp I have my soldering iron set at.
If you have any old & broken electronic board lying around, like toys, VHS player, an old Nokia phone, … I would suggest you try and practice and test at what temp does your solder melts and if you can solder a random wire anywhere on that old e-waste.
Edit: Use a sharp pointed tip, not a flat screw driver shaped tip on your Proffieboard
It’s maybe a tad hot, but it’s a reasonable starting point. The “correct” valiue depends on many factors, including your own skill level. Generally it’s better to start with a lower temperature and work your way up. Ideally each solder point should take ~2 seconds. If the temperature is too low, then you’ll need to hold the soldering iron in the same spot for a while (5-10 seconds) to get the solder to melt, and once it does, you may still get a cold solder joint that doesn’t bind that well. Also, holding the iron in place too long gives the heat time to spread to nearby components and cables which can cause something else to melt. On the other hand, once it gets too hot, you have no time to adjust anything, and you can damage the board, the wire and nearby components very quickly.
Summary; you want the iron hot enough that the solder melts quickly (~1-2 seconds) but not hotter.
Yeah, I agree I have a handful of both. I prefer two, but he’s done a pretty good job of making one easy to navigate. Also, this specific saber is setup for just one, and I don’t really want to mess with diy-ing a second.
Well, first soldering attempt on the board was a failure, unfortunately. Luckily, I don’t think I ruined anything.
It actually worked briefly, and everything seemed to function correctly as long as I kept it very still. So, at least, I think I have the battery and button soldered correctly and everything going to the correct pads.
I just don’t know what I’m doing with soldering. I can’t get it to stick, so I think my problem is cold joints? I’ve watched videos, but my setup seems to work way differently. I never get that perfect dome. Not even close. I started at 300 c and went up to about 360 c as it felt like it wasn’t getting hot enough. Not sure what I’m doing wrong. Maybe I need to get one of those practice kits.
I’m also really paranoid about damaging the board. I don’t have another on hand and have heard of raised and burnt pads. Is that a legitimate concern? Do I need to be heating the pads up more? Thanks again for your help.
Most likely.
Especially the BATT- pads have a LOT of copper connected to them, which means that they soak up heat, and for the solder to stick properly, both the wire and the solder pad needs to be hot enough to melt the solder. Ideally, you want to put the soldering iron on one side of the wire, with just a tiny bit of solder on it to increase heat transfer. The you put the solder on the other side of the wire. When the wire is hot enough to melt the solder, you should get good adhesion, at least to the wire. You may need to hold the iron there another second (while feeding it the right amount of solder) to get the pad hot enough. I recommend starting with the data wires since they will be the easiest.
Things that can help:
PTFE or silicon coated wire. The jacked of these wires will not melt, so the wires will be fine even if your soldering skills are not great.
mil-spec tin-coated wires. (A lot of PTFE wire is like this) The tin coating means that solder sticks very easily to it.
“helping hands” or something to hold the wire and board in place while you solder.
Thin solder. Thin solder melts easier and it makes it easier to get the right amount in there. I use 0.25mm solder if I remember correctly.
Leaded solder. While this isn’t the best for health reasons (wash your hands after using it!) leaded solder is much easier to work with and requires lower temperatures. Once you learn, put the leaded solder away and use non-leaded solder, even though it’s harder.
Flux. You need flux to make things stick properly, most solder comes with rosin core, and if you have that you might not need more flux, but some people like to use some extra flux to make things easier.
A reasonably sized soldering tip. Too small and it’s very difficult to get things to heat up properly, and too big and you will be soldering half the board.
Clean the soldering tip. Most soldering kits comes with a sponge, if so, get it wet and use it. I like using a wire-mesh sponge with some flux in it, but regardless of how you do it, clean the tip frequently, or the oxides of the tip will make heat transfer harder, and solder won’t stick to the solder iron.
And keep watching those videos, it’s important to know how it’s supposed to work.
Flux and a pair of +2 simple cheap reading glasses changed my soldering life. I use a small paint brush to apply flux to all of the pads I’ll solder.
There steps are usually: strip the wire coating, twit core strands, dip in flux, tin with solder, brush flux onto through hole pad, insert wire, heat and add a bit more solder. Sometimes with flux in place, the extra solder on the wire and on the tinned tip is almost enough. It will flow out and distribute across the fluxed zone.
This solved my problem of the solder flowing onto the tip of the iron while not quite getting onto the pad.
Oh and I should add at then end use isopropyl alcohol or circuit board cleaner to dissolve the flux and clean it off with a toothbrush and some cotton swabs.
the heat shoots straight to the tip