A soldering iron is a very necessary and useful tool for all home craftsmen who love crafts and DIY things. Of course, such a device can be purchased at an electrical goods store, but it costs money. Masters of their craft can try to make such a tool on their own, especially if the work requires a specific unit.
How to make a soldering iron: the history of the tool and its structure
The first soldering iron was invented by Ernst Sachs in 1921. He also patented a hammer tool for tin work.
The inside of the soldering iron is simple and consists of the following components:
- Metal tube with handle and sting;
- An electrically insulated heating element (the insulation can be mica or ceramics);
- A current-carrying cord connected to a network or transformer.
Basically, electric soldering irons operate on mains power, a transformer, or batteries. There are types that have a built-in gas burner or conventional external heating.
A low-power electric soldering iron is used for soldering electronic parts and microcircuits, and a powerful one is used for massive, large parts.
Types of soldering irons:
- Nichrome - have a nichrome wire spiral that passes current;
- Ceramic - consists of ceramics, heats up quickly, but, unfortunately, such a heater is very difficult to repair after a breakdown;
- Induction – heating occurs using an induction coil;
- Pulse (spot) – works in the mode of pressing and holding the start button;
- Gas – stand-alone cordless soldering iron that can be used anywhere;
- Battery - this type is usually low-voltage, having low power (usually about 12 v or 15);
- Infrared – heated by infrared radiation with a wavelength of 2-10 microns;
- Ultrasonic – used where it is difficult to solder aluminum using conventional methods;
- A soldering iron heated over an open fire is a fairly simple device that sometimes replaces a high-power device.
The most common are network devices powered from a 220V network. Sometimes, when assembling industrial electrical appliances, an entire soldering station is used, with which you can use additional capabilities.
It is also worth noting a blowtorch, in which heat is released when flammable substances burn. It is used to heat elements, melt solder and warm up other soldering irons.
By the way, soldering irons are now starting to appear in games like Minecraft. To make it there, you need to add a bucket of water, 3 iron ingots and 1 bronze.
Guide: how to make a soldering iron at home from a resistor
Most simple circuit creating a soldering iron from improvised means - from a resistor. The device will operate at a voltage of 6-24 Volts.
For a soldering iron you will need:
- Resistor PEV or MLT;
- A couple of copper rods of different sections;
- Spring ring, washer, screw;
- Textolite for handle.
It remains to find out the sequence of steps for creating a soldering iron at home.
The manufacturing process is divided into the following stages:
- The end of a thick rod is drilled with a thread for a screw;
- Next, you need to cut out a cavity for the retainer (spring ring);
- The second end is drilled with a diameter like a thin twig (it will act as a sting);
- Then all the parts are assembled into one;
- A soldering iron tip is attached to the resistor at the back and secured with a screw and washer;
- A handle with places for a resistor and wire is made from textolite;
- The power cord is connected to the terminals of the soldering iron.
Homemade pulse soldering iron with your own hands
The principle of operation of a pulse tool is to supply a small current to the tip during soldering, and not constantly. To assemble such a super fast heating soldering iron (for example, Moment), you will have to use a transformer.
What else do you need:
- LED indicators;
- Copper wire;
- Plastic body;
- Stand made of dielectrics;
- On/off button.
The operating principle of a pulse soldering iron is a little more complicated than that of a conventional device with a heating element. To start creating it, you will first have to tinker with the transformer, as well as make calculations and select the wire.
You can use a switching power supply, and in this case the transformer just needs to be slightly altered and rewinded.
This is done like this:
- The secondary winding is removed and rewinding is done using a couple of turns of wire;
- The transformer with a new winding is placed in the prepared housing;
- Instead of a switch, a button to turn on the device is inserted;
- A dielectric stand is mounted, and a copper loop is fixed on it - a thin tip;
- The tip is then connected to the secondary winding of the transformer;
- All that remains is to make the handle.
During operation, you do not need to hold the button in the on state for a long time, as in this case the device may overheat and fail.
DIY battery-powered soldering iron
It’s quite possible to make a battery-powered soldering iron yourself by preparing the necessary materials.
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To create a battery-powered soldering iron you need:
- Ballpoint pen body;
- Wire made of steel and copper;
- Resistor;
- Textolite double-sided;
- Copper foil and wire;
- Insulating tape;
- Heat-resistant handle;
- Iron tube (can be replaced with a body from a metal ballpoint pen);
- AA or Krona batteries;
- Talc;
- Wire cutters;
- Silicate glue;
- Scissors and stationery knife;
- Newspaper.
Instructions on how to make a cordless soldering iron:
- Work begins with sharpening the copper wire. This can be done on a newspaper with a stationery knife. Sharpening should be continued until the tip of the wire resembles the end of a screwdriver (bevel angle 45 degrees). After sharpening, solder must be applied to the surface, otherwise the uncovered part will burn during operation.
- To create an electrically insulating mass, you need to mix glue and talc to the consistency of liquid sour cream, and then apply it to the sting with tweezers or a plate. This mixture should be very sticky and after applying it to the sting, it should be sprinkled with talcum powder.
- Next, a foil tube is put on the tip. In this case, you need to leave the tip protruding from the tube no more than 1 cm. Next, the heater is covered with a thin layer of insulation and dried. The temperature should be at least 150 degrees, and the mass should become solid. After this, you need to use nichrome wire and wrap it around the sting. Winding is done in a spiral. The ends of the wire must be brought out straight, and the winding must be covered with an electrical insulating mixture and dried again. The turning end is retracted onto the heater and then attached to the tube. Apply the mixture again and dry.
- All that remains is to assemble the device. The ends of the heater are connected to the surface of the batteries. The contacts are insulated and the whole thing ends with a wooden or plastic handle that holds the batteries.
When working with a portable soldering iron, you should always keep a can of compressed air nearby. You will need it to remove dust from microcircuits before soldering.
You can make a model with a power cord. True, in this case you will need a 220/12V step-down transformer unit.
For ease of use, you can make your own stand for the device, the basis of which can be any metal box.
A simple DIY mini soldering iron and device repair
You can create a miniature nano-electric soldering iron at home using a gas lighter or car cigarette lighter. Kind of like a snicker.
What you will need to create a mini soldering iron:
- Gas lighter in a metal case;
- Copper wire;
- File;
- Pliers.
It is better to choose a lighter that has a large fire and the ability to work even in windy weather.
Work algorithm:
- The wire is clamped with pliers and then wrapped onto the lighter box;
- The other end of the wire element is sharpened;
- The sting should be fixed with the same wire in several turns.
A small homemade micro-soldering iron is ready. All that remains is to check its performance and you can solder SMD and other small parts. If the need for such a tool no longer exists, it can always be disassembled and then restored.
What to do if the soldering iron stops working? Most likely, the tip is charred or clogged. An activator will help to repair the part, which will very carefully clean the part from carbon deposits. Moreover, such repairs will not take much time.
Instead of regular cigarettes, it has become fashionable to smoke electronic ones, and instead of regular lighters, USB lighters have begun to be used, which serve as a kind of analogue of a car cigarette lighter. It is very easy to charge such a device by connecting it to the USB connector of a laptop or mobile phone. But the problem is that such things are expensive, and not everyone has the money. Therefore, some craftsmen try to assemble a lighter or electronic cigarette at home.
Warning! Making cigarettes at home can harm your body if you assemble the components incorrectly! You may get burns respiratory tract and faces. Therefore, if you are not confident in your abilities, it is better to buy a vaporizer and not take risks.
What you need to create an electronic cigarette:
- Cardboard tube;
- Batteries 3 D or 4 C;
- The wire;
- Insulating tape;
- Scissors;
- Pliers;
- Alligator clip;
- Cartridge.
The process of creating a fashion device:
- The batteries are folded lengthwise and aligned with a wire, the length of which should exceed the length of all batteries by 3 cm;
- Then the insulation of the wire is removed with pliers and a spiral is made;
- The clamp should hold the other end of the wire;
- Then you should crimp the wiring again with pliers;
- Now the end of the spiral should be attached to the minus of the upper battery and secured with tape;
- Next, a tube is made, which should be longer than all the batteries and contain the batteries;
- The top of this tube must be wrapped with an elastic band and the cartridge must be connected to the cigarette with a plug.
The electronic cigarette is ready. But remember about safety precautions and possible consequences such work.
DIY soldering iron (video)
Making a soldering iron yourself is an interesting, but painstaking task. This matter must be approached carefully and safety precautions must be observed when working with electrical appliances and elements. As for electronic cigarettes, it is still better to buy them so as not to risk your health.
Vaper's ABCs
Do-it-yourself electronic cigarette? Who needs this and does it make sense, you ask. Among the modern craze for these devices, as strange as it may seem at first glance, there is a segment of people who prefer to tinker with the hardware and assemble their own electronic cigarette.
There are a number of reasons for this, which we will consider and find out how to make electronics at home. Go.
Who might need to make electronic cigarettes with their own hands?
That is, as you can see, there are not one or two people who want to make something in their garage or on their balcony, but much more. Let's find out how to make an electronic cigarette at home, and what we need for this.
Porridge from an ax, or a fur mod from a flashlight
In order to assemble your first device you will need:
- pocket flashlight;
- battery standard 26650 or 18650. The difference between them will be in capacity and diameter;
- textolite;
- soldering iron and related consumables;
- connector from an old electronic cigarette;
- evaporator. It's quite difficult to do at home. It is advisable to purchase it in a store.
And the most important thing is to familiarize yourself with safety precautions when working with a soldering iron, and also become familiar with the risks that may await you if the battery in your mechanical mod is connected incorrectly. Safety first.
The circuit of the electronic cigarette that we will assemble is extremely simple. Since we are considering creating a mechanical mod, we will not need any microcircuits or complex technical details. Battery contacts to evaporator contacts - that’s the entire diagram of our device, but first things first.
Let's start creating our masterpiece. First, we need to disassemble the flashlight and remove all the insides from it. Sometimes you may have trouble removing the button, but this is not a problem either. The main thing is not to use too much “rough male physical strength“so that our housing from a Chinese lighting device does not die for a long time.
On the table in front of you, after disassembling the flashlight, were:
- flashlight body;
- glass;
- LED module;
- a spring to support the module;
- plate for fixing the internals in the flashlight body.
Next, we need to take a piece of PCB prepared in advance. We take a piece of glass from a flashlight, apply it to the textolite and trace it with a pencil or marker in order to cut out a textolite circle of the same size. Cut out the resulting circle and trim the edges. Here is the textolite twin of your piece of glass.
Next, in this textolite part we need to cut a hole for the connector from an old electronic cigarette. If you do not have a drill of a suitable diameter, then drill a smaller hole, and then bore it with a needle file. We insert the connector into the resulting washer. After this, the PCB needs to be tinned and the connector must be soldered to the PCB.
Instead of the wire that was soldered to the middle contact, we solder more powerful wires, since we will use loads with low resistance. These loads are very close to a short circuit state, and they can simply burn out a small-section wire, and a microcircuit that is in digital mode can be damaged.
After this, we need to unsolder the LEDs that hold the board of our flashlight and solder the wire from the central connector to a regular microswitch (in our case it was soldered from an old TV). And from the switch to the central contact of the microcircuit, where we have a spring soldered, also known as the positive terminal.
We need to solder the negative terminal from the connector of the future electronic cigarette to the negative terminal of the board from which the LEDs were soldered.
You need to drill holes in the lid and in the reflector of the flashlight that will match so that the device's power button is located there. Next, we make a square hole out of a round hole, and you can begin to assemble our homemade device.
We need to insert all this into the flashlight cover, place it on hot glue and secure everything with a special washer, which was included in the package of the flashlight. We have a positive terminal, so we need to install a negative one. For the negative terminal, we use the bus bar from the flashlight kit, only at the bottom instead of the spring you need to place a coin with a denomination of 2 rubles.
We screw on the evaporator and voila. You can enjoy all the delights of vaping a mech mod on a device that was assembled almost from scrap materials and with minimal financial costs.
Now it doesn’t shine, but soars
As you have seen, there is nothing difficult in assembling such a device at home. The electronic cigarette you create just needs your own approach and a little imagination.
This is just one method out of a great many on the Internet. And every day craftsmen are coming up with more and more new ways to assemble such devices almost from garbage or from seemingly unnecessary trash.
The main thing is that you have basic skills in using a soldering iron, basic skills in physics, and a simple understanding of the structure and operating principle of an electronic cigarette. Go ahead and discover the world of delicious steam!
A small flashlight - a lighter with charge control from an electronic cigarette.
We buy the cheapest electronic cigarette, I bought this one for 500 rubles. Included with the cigarette are two chargers - from the mains and from the cigarette lighter, and the cigarette is charged from the USB input. There were also 10 smoking cartridges in the box. 
So we need - the actual electronic cigarette, a cheap one chinese lantern for 100 rub. with one large and bright LED, one smoking cartridge, a thick-walled aluminum tube, a charging adapter - it is included, thermal paste, a glue gun, heat-shrinkable tubes, and a soldering iron with tin, of course). 
We take an electronic cigarette, remove the plastic plug that glows like a light when smoking, it also shows the charge and discharge with a red glow. Inside the cigarette we see a recessed metal tablet with three wires and it also shines red on the plug - this is a pressure sensor, a charge and discharge controller and much more. You need to carefully use a sharp match or an insulated wire to pull the controller out of the cigarette, carefully pulling the controller wires - pull out the end of the battery with the leads. I’ll tell you right away that the entire battery will not come out of the case - the wires will get in the way. Now I have already pulled out the battery and removed the rubber band from the controller. 
The black wire is the minus of the battery and goes to the body of the cigarette, the red is the plus of the battery, it goes to the controller, the blue is the plus of the cigarette, it comes from the center of the threaded contact where the heater with the smoking cartridge is screwed.
We need to cut through the blue wire like a bomb)) leaving part of the wire on the controller and part on the cigarette - so that it reaches the positive of the battery, where the red wire from the controller goes. Like this. 
Next, we disassemble the USB adapter, it has two wires inside, red is a plus, it goes to the center of the threaded contact of the cigarette and white is a minus, it goes to the body of the cigarette. 
We unsolder the wires from the threaded part of the adapter where the cigarette is screwed in, leaving them on the part where the USB is, and solder the red wire of the adapter to the blue controller that we had a snack with. We solder the white wire of the adapter to the negative of the battery, where the black wire of the controller and the black wire of the cigarette body go. We solder the blue wire coming from the center of the threaded contact of the cigarette to the plus of the battery where the red wire from the controller is soldered. I’ll note right away that when you solder, disconnect the soldering iron from the network, when I didn’t turn it off and soldered, the controller blinked red and don’t short-circuit the battery with the soldering iron tip. 
Now we make a flashlight, unsolder a large LED from a Chinese lantern, immediately marking with a pencil on the LED body where it has a plus. Use a hacksaw to cut a hole in the aluminum tube - it will remove the heat from the LED. 
We solder the resistance from the Chinese lantern into the central contact of the threaded part of the adapter - it stands at 2.5 - 3 ohms. 
To the plus of the LED, we solder a flexible wire, insulate it with heat shrink and through the slot, insert it inside the tube.
We solder the wire to the resistance and also heat shrink it, leave the length of the wire so long that the resistance along with it fits into the tube and does not push the LED out from the other end of the tube. 
We take the smoking cartridge and take out the container from it. We need the cartridge body itself.
We cut off the plugged end of the cartridge so that the resulting tube is slightly shorter than the aluminum one. We cut two slots with a blade - one for the entire length of the cartridge, the other for the length of the LED output. 
Coat the ends of the aluminum tube with thermal paste. 
We place the cut cartridge on an aluminum tube and solder a single-core wire, from the minus of the LED to the body of the threaded part of the adapter with an interference fit; it should press the LED to the tube, and the tube to the adapter. 
img Spread a thin layer of glue from a gun, let it harden so that it does not stick. 
We cover the whole thing with heat-shrink tubing in one or two layers. Warm it up well - the glue should melt. Ready 
Let's see how it shines. 
We drip some glue onto the battery terminals, not a lot - the battery should fit back into the cigarette. 
We push the battery into the case - leave the controller outside. 
Drill a hole in the adapter body. 
We generously coat the adapter with hot-melt glue from a gun and quickly, before the glue hardens, place the cigarette with the controller in the adapter, so that the controller indicator is opposite the hole in the housing. We collect all this, cut off the frozen excess glue. 
Lighter, take the heating element of the cigarette, remove the standard cap, remove the wick from the mesh and carefully pull out the spiral from inside. I tore mine off from the central electrode of the heater - I had to clamp it with a copper wire. As can be seen in the photo. 
We twist the heater all the way and see the spiral heats up - you can light the tinder. 
Don't forget to put a rubber ring on the thread of the cigarette - it will prevent the flashlight from unscrewing and turning on accidentally. I applied heat shrink to part of the thread. Do not hold the flashlight without the attachment - you may short-circuit the battery 
Here's what actually happened: you can store tinder in the heater cap.
Pros - cons.
+weighs almost nothing
+ shines very brightly
+ takes up little space
+has charge control and charges via USB
+you can set the tinder on fire
-scattered light because there is no reflector, I tried to select small lenses, but it didn’t work
- it doesn’t shine for long, I have an hour, then it starts to dim
- the controller does not show the battery discharge well, if the flashlight is on continuously it does not show the discharge if the flashlight attachment is on, and when the lighter is on when the battery is discharged, it flashes red
-if the attachment in your pocket is unscrewed, you can short-circuit the battery, for example, on a coin
-there is no power button, you just twist the nozzle
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