A few days ago we held a soldering tutorial in conjunction with the Chicago Public Library. I led the event, buoyed by over a decade of knowledge in how not to solder and a few years of actual decent soldering. Soldering is the art and science of joining metal to metal with the help of more metal. (It’s pretty metal.) The project I chose was the Digistump Digispark, a small USB-powered arduino-compatible board with limited I/O for people who don’t need the whole kitchen sink the Arduino drags along with it. CPL provided eight soldering irons, and generous members bought a bunch for the space so we’d have 20 total to match the expected number of attendees. The project seemed, from my point of view, juuuust on the cusp of what a newcomer could successfully build while still being useful for them for future experimentation. I’m not a huge fan of ‘blinkies’ and other kits that teach someone to solder but don’t leave them with anything beyond a trophy that will eventually make its way into a landfill, so the possibility for a project that would both exercise a newcomer’s ability to solder and provide future utility was too nice to pass up.
I placed the order for the Digisparks directly from Digistump, and it sparked a pretty nice email chain between the head of the company, Eric, and me. The kits arrived the day before the event, no fault of Digistump’s (sometimes stuff just misses a truck between USPS sorting centers) and I got to the space bright and early Saturday morning, inventoried the kits to make sure we had enough for the attendees to build, and set about rearranging the main space into a nice teaching setup.
People trickled in about ten minutes before the event technically started, which is always a good sign! Jessica graciously volunteered to go out front and help guide people to our back-of-building entrance while we printed out additional signs and hung them up to help newcomers find the space.
A CPL bus arrived with the majority of people, some legal waivers were signed, I gave a brief powerpoint about the “do”s and “don’t”s of soldering:
- do clean the tip whenever you feel it’s not working well
- do tie your hair back if there’s a chance it’ll hit the iron
- don’t put solder directly on the tip unless you have to
- don’t set the iron down against anything else
- don’t accidentally grab for it while it’s falling because you’ll end up with a scar on your index finger when you accidentally grab it at the metal part (That last one may come from personal experience…)
The most important slide showed examples of “good” and “bad” solder joints.
After everyone received their kits, Dmitriy and Brian and I, walked table to table and helped people through the assembly process. It was great to see the participants encouraging one another and being incredibly patient.
We tested the finished products and…
