CMU School of Drama


Thursday, September 08, 2022

A Walk Through of My Soldering Station

SoundGirls.org: When working on electronics it is important to keep a tidy, and safe workspace. I thought I would show what my bench looks like as an example for others who are just starting out on their tinkering journey.

2 comments:

Owen Sahnow said...

This is a pretty boilerplate soldering station. I was imagining that there were some new and exciting tools or a really cool setup. But, like the majority of other hobbyists, this is the corner of a workstation with a bunch of stuff necessary for soldering. They didn’t even mention the coolest soldering tool that I’ve ever seen that we got during the audio mini freshman year that’s a desoldering tube that uses suction. I know there’s an even fancier version of this called a desoldering iron that both heats up the solder and sucks it up. We had the low budget version of that. Wearing safety glasses is something that everyone says but in my experience no one actually does. Additionally, everyone always says lead solder is bad but then that’s what we all use anyway. The alligator clip stand with the built in magnifying glass is cool and I imagine some people do use it, but I’ve never had to solder something so small that I needed the glass and a lot of times it just ends up getting in the way.

Kaylie Carpenter said...

I hard agree with Owen on this one here. I totally forgot about the de-soldering tool from freshman year, that thing is awesome!! Soldering always felt to me like a skill you learn to support another hobby (like building electronics or something), so I was excited to see some cool gadgets or some real good bins for organization in this article, but this would definitely be a good checklist for someone wanting to make their own foray into tinkering desks. In our office back home, my fiance has a tinkering set up with a 3D printer, soldering tools, Arduino parts, and more. Nothing makes him happier than taking someone on a tour of his desk. I was expecting something a little more akin to those tours I get from Matt every so often. Once we have a garage or shed I plan on investing in power tools for my own tinkering space.