In the course of adding a brushless tail motor to a little Walkera helicopter, I had to solder three very small pairs of wires together.
The first solder joint went OK, but as I started to work on the second pair of wires, the first joint came undone.
Then I realized two things:
- That I should immediately reinforce solder joints with shrink tubing.
- That I got lucky the first time.
Try as I might, I couldn’t calm my shaky hands sufficiently to solder another pair.
I was also hampered because my usual soldering jigs are big and don’t allow for fine adjustments, such as finessing to ultra-small wires in space until they touch.
Frustrated, I began imagining more complex jigs with small channels to hold the wires in place, but I suspected they wouldn’t work any better than what I already had.
An Internet search quickly provided a simple solution: masking tape, sticky side up, taped to a piece of cardboard.
Quick, cheap, effective.
A few minutes after cobbling this together, I completed my three soldering tasks.Tags: Helicopters, Tools.