Our first ‘learning to solder’ session last Sunday drew quite a crowd. With 20 kids showing up and quite a few parents there too, we packed the FYCDP house on Crown Street. George Edenfield, who’s involved in Putnam County Auxiliary Communications and an active amateur radio operator, helped lead the session. Many of the kids brought their own soldering irons or borrowed one from a parent, but only a few had ever soldered before.
After going through the basics and soldering safety, George had everyone solder two wires together so they could learn how to handle a soldering iron and learn how to recognize a good soldering joint. We then moved on to a small kit that creates a ‘chaser’ effect in 6 LEDs. The kids picked it up pretty quickly, although most needed someone to help them with the first soldering joint on the small circuit board. A few even got to learn how to use a solder sucker (desoldering tool) when they got a little carried away putting solder on the copper pads on the circuit board. Desoldering techniques, a possiblebackup topic if there was extra time, will be covered at a future meeting.
Although the kits didn’t get completed due to time and everyone helping each other, everyone kept saying how much they liked it and wanted to do more. So we’ll continue working on those that didn’t get it completed at our next meeting, February 14th, and for those that did or missed the Jan 31rst meeting we’ll have another simpler, quicker soldering project. It was so popular we ran out of the chaser kits.