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Comment by konschubert | Hacker News Reader

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konschubert

I knew I was bad at soldering, I didn't know I was THAT bad.

I need to take a course.

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"The bigger the blob, the better the job."

Some of my work looks like I was trying to use solder as a conformal coating.

Keep in mind: this stuff has to be as close to perfect as possible because lives depend on it.

Unless you're sending your stuff to space, I suspect you can cut yourself a bit of slack here. :)

The fact that my components keep failing says otherwise. ;)

>course

I used to work with a developer whose second job was with HP back in the 70s. He was hired as a technician building lab equipment and had to be prequalified from an educational and trades/skill perspective to be hired.

Then they taught him to solder again. Their standards were apparently incredibly high.

This reminds me of my drafting classes (back when paper was used). I was re-taught how to make letters. One would think that it would not be necessary but for their standards, it was.

Yeah. Damn. I hope nobody at NASA looks at some of the repairs I've had to make on my riding mower. I blame the work angles of some of those jobs...

If it makes you feel any better, I burned my hand pretty bad when mowing the lawn as a kid when my dad’s exhaust pipe repair fell off.

No harm, no foul is what I mean to say, haha.

I had to fix the exhaust on this one too! This mower came with the property I bought this summer. You'd be hard pressed to find something less maintained than this mower. It was missing both exhaust bolts where the exhaust connects to the manifold. I had some left over "make-a-gasket" material so I used that and some old machine screws that I had available. Seriously, half of the exhaust was just banging around, exhaust leak city with it coming straight out of the manifold.

You are not alone. I have a cheapo soldering iron with a roll of ... metal melty wire in a plastic bag that I pull out and struggle for 30mins to make a basic connection almost certainly the wrong way.

But I flick the little switch and the little fan comes on and I am happy.

But I should do a course. Or at least google some more. I don't even know many of the terms people are using here...

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