Soldering WS2811 strip

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markvr

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I'm trying to solder wires onto WS2811 strip and appear to be struggling somewhat! There are tiny holes in each pad, but I'm using 0.6mm hookup wire, which doesn't fit through them. If I enlarge the holes with a pin, they tend to just split to the edge of the pad. I tried drilling a 0.8mm hole, but that also splits the pad and/or removes most of it!

Then tried soldering wire to the surface rather than through the hole, which was more successful, but still not really good, with solder everywhere due to trying to "scrape" the solder off the iron onto the pad & wire.

I'm also having trouble getting solder to stick to the pad at all, tried lightly sanding the pad and adding more flux from a pen which made no difference

I know a lot of people have used these strips, so is it just me?! Does anyone have any tips & tricks on how to solder these things easily? I've used the non-addressable RGB strips in the past - which have bigger pads despite being 4-way - with nowhere near as much difficulty.
 
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It can be tricky to start out with. When you're tinning the pads, it helps to have a fair amount of solder already on your tip when you heat them up, and then apply solder directly to them. Don't try using the through holes, just solder directly to the surface. Be quick in your application of the iron, cause these pads lift very easily.

You said you're trying to scrape the solder off the iron? Don't do that. :) Heat the wire & pre-tinned pad up, and then apply solder to them while they're in contact with the iron still. If your pad & wire are pre-tinned, and you have enough solder on the pad already, you won't need to apply any more to join the wire. Just heat up the solder thats there while pressing the wire on it and it'll join securely. Make sure you let the solder cool completely before moving the wire at all.
 
know a lot of people have used these strips, so is it just me?
;)

You know, you are setting yourself up here for a snappy answer...

But coming back to your question, I would try and source thinner-gauge wiring. For example, I have 30AWG wire-wrap wiring here that I use to mitigate pin mistakes like not powering the 3.3V outlet from the voltage regulator on the MK20 chip. If you know your hole ID, then you can use any one of many online resources to see what AWG wire will fit through, and so on.

As for the question of how to attach the wires themselves, my suggestion would be to look into using a user-applied solder flux. There are any number of them on the market, some are water-soluble, some are no-clean fluxes, etc. But flux makes a huge difference - when the contacts are bathed in the stuff, it is so much easier to make a clean solder bead on difficult connections. I would also acquire an assortment of soldering iron tips to cover a variety of soldering tasks, from tips with oblong ends to help with drag soldering to very fine tips for 'thin' stuff..
 
If your pad & wire are pre-tinned, and you have enough solder on the pad already, you won't need to apply any more to join the wire. Just heat up the solder thats there while pressing the wire on it and it'll join securely. Make sure you let the solder cool completely before moving the wire at all.

This is the key. Having soldered wires on to the ends of over 120 strip segments (over 700 pads) in my current project, I've found that the following process works well:

First, prepping and equipment:
  • make sure if your strips have adhesive backing that you remove the adhesive from behind the pads being soldered (pick at it w/ your finger nail and peel it back). If you dont do this, the adhesive melts and oozes up through the hole.
  • use a good soldering iron and a small chisel style tip (where the flat portion of the tip is about as wide as the LED strip pads are long.
  • solder at 310-330C. I've tinned about 500 pads now at this temp, and never had one lift... even when having to re-solder wires on a few occasions and even when leaving the tip on the pad for 10-15 seconds at a time.


Actual process:
  • tin the soldering iron tip, leaving very little solder on the tip (use one of the metal wool type cleaners, not the sponge. Sooooo much nicer for the $5-7 they cost)
  • tin the wire. plenty of videos on youtube for this.
  • tin the pad itself:
  • rest the tip on the pad. Wiggle it around a bit (gently) to score the surface a bit and warm up the pad. If you see gunk "pilling" up during this step, you didn't get all the adhesive off. Clean off the pad and try again.
  • after resting the tip on the pad for a second or two, apply the solder to the pad where it intersects w/ the iron tip (I cheat and touch both the pad and tip w/ the solder at the same time).
  • if you've done it right, the solder will flow out to the edges of the pad on its own. If it flows but not all the way to the edge, then just wiggle the iron enough to get the whole pad.
  • if the pad wasn't warm enough, the solder will just climb up onto the tip of the iron. If this happens, dont "scrape" the solder onto the pad, but quickly try turning the tip 180 degrees and rest it back down on the pad. If it still doesn't flow onto the pad, dont worry. let it all cool off for a bit, re-tin and clean the tip, and try again.
  • Finally, just rest the tinned wire on top of the tinned pad and apply the iron directly to the wire. The solder on the pad and wire should flow together. As noted by digital, make sure you dont move the wire until the joint is solid. I held the wire down w/ a closed pair of needle nose just resting on the wire.


I'm self-taught, so if any of the more seasoned folks see some bad advice here, please speak up! :p
 
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I gave up trying to poke wire through the hole, and am going for the surface mount approach which is much more successful, and has less risk of destroying the pad. I hadn't considered tinning the pad before (I'm new to this game...) and that's made a huge difference. I also sanded one of my solder iron tips down so it's much smaller now (about the size of a pad) which has helped. I don't have actual temp readings on my solder iron (it just goes 0-10) but am using it at maximum temp.

Many thanks both for your help, think I've finally got there and it's saved my hours of frustration!
 
Glad to hear things are going more smoothly now. Congrats!

BTW, if you just so happen to be using the ultra-popular soldering station that looks like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Soldering-Sta...=1386096262&sr=8-1&keywords=soldering+station
(Sold under multiple brands) Then you should solder a bit below max.

Before I got a nicer station w/ a temp readout, the above unit was the one I was using. Some are apparently marked w/ temps, but mine wasn't. Turns out the max setting is around 450C, which is certainly hot enough to cause some problems w/ killing pads on those strips (or on many cheaper protoboards! I learned this the hard way :) )
 
I'm using this which is apparently 50w, compared to 40w in your link, so I'll turn it down a bit I think!

thanks again, it was driving me nuts, and is going much smoother now :)
 
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