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Comment by talldayo | Hacker News Reader

You're correct that some soldering irons (especially uber-cheap ones) are shit, but Pinecil proves cheap can also be good. Past a certain point, soldering becomes a hobby about how dangerous you're willing to get to make things easier on yourself. You can swap out non-toxic solder for lead trace if you want a cleaner board; then there are high-wattage irons, board reflow/fluxing, and even all sorts of scale-specific hacks.

When you zoom out, I think home soldering is about as effective as it can reasonably get without fumigating your house.

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I think for simple through-hole stuff, this should be fine. However, so much stuff now requires SMT reflow and a hot air wand (and likely a binocular microscope) that except for home builds and power electronics, I rarely use an actual iron.

As you say, it's so much easier to get good solder joints (especially for the fine stuff like QFN/BGA) with lead blends and flux, that having a vent hood is likely required as well.

It's cheaper and easier to get a USB microscope and look at a laptop screen than to peer through a binocular microscope.

I've used only lead-free solder for a decade. Get the good stuff with some silver in it and it's not difficult.

I usually use my phone zoomed in + flashlight in video recording, and an external macro lens. It probably isn't as good as a usb microscope, but it works really, really well.

Looking at videos of people using microscopes, the quality seems to be on-par or worse than my phone.

Can you recommend a macro lens to use?

I actually just picked it up from a random airport store. So, it isn't like a specific brand or anything.

I have a USB microscope and I'd say my phone on 5x soft-zoom is a pretty similar experience. The main thing is having enough screen size you can see, and a stable platform.

Plus USB scope things are like $80 on AliExpress and work fine.

Jewler's Loupes work as well.

In a pinch, but you have to get your nose way too close to the soldering iron.

I stumped up for a set of dental loupes many moons ago and they were nice, but expensive. They're safety glasses to boot.

They're come down dramatically in price since then. https://www.practicon.com/Loupes-Magnifying-Eyewear

I have 2 vision engineering Mantis and I have yet to see a video system that can rival it to work under it, no lag, “real” 3D vision (you can move your head to see behind magnified objects). The only things I miss sometimes is more magnification and a camera port to take pictures/ videos. As per soldering iron I could write a book, I had Hakko, Pace, Metcal, Weller, Ersa and to me the best experience is with JBC although the tips might not last if you’re not careful.

As much as I'd love to try your suggestions, they're very expensive even in that space.

From what I can see, the Mantis microscopes are in the $3500+ range and the JBC stuff is similarly expensive.

Most hobbyists would cringe at the price of buying a Thermaltronics soldering iron and that's like 5x cheaper. However, I can at least conclusively demonstrate the vast difference between something like that and a Hakko right in front of a person.

This stuff is like the difference between a $100 guitar, a $500 guitar, and a $2000 guitar. The difference between the $100 and the $500 one is obvious to almost everybody. The differences between the $500 and $2000 one won't be obviously noticeable until you get a lot of experience.

Absolutely, don’t get me wrong, all the other brands are fine tools, and nowadays even aliexpress soldering stations work wonders even for professional use, years ago only metcal and JBC had the “instant heat” technology, same for the microscope 4k 120fps cameras are trivial now but not so long ago they where unaffordable for the common person and optical stereo inspection micoscopes were a bit more affordable but the working distance and as commented here they are uncomfortable for longer use, the mantis was a revolution in that too.

> It's cheaper and easier to get a USB microscope and look at a laptop screen than to peer through a binocular microscope.

I find the lag to be murder when trying to solder very small things. I can use a USB microscope in a pinch, but it makes me miserable.

My mother was recently cataloging some very small pots from an archaeological dig. I sent her with my nice camera, a prime lens, some macro adapters, and an adapter that would let her mount the body to the eyepiece of a microscope. The detail she was able to capture with the prime and macro adapters so vastly exceeded the capabilities of the university microscope that she decided to just use the camera, which had the additional advantage of having focus stacking to compensate for the shallow depth of field.

I would expect that this setup would work pretty well for a bench microscope setup if the camera can output video and isn't too big to mount on a tabletop tripod. Rather a lot can be done with crop zoom if you can get the focal length and lighting right.

I have a cheap binocular microscope at home, and solder most everything underneath it. A USB microscope is much lower resolution, and the image lags. They're pretty terrible.

At work I get to use a very very expensive Olympus binocular microscope. It is extraordinarily good, but at about 60k it costs more than a car.

Yeah you can get an old Bauch&Lomb for under $200. Probably need an LED illuminator ring for $10 too.

They have great field of view (cm) at decent/variable magnification (20-100x) and response time is instant, whereas your phone/USB are going to have just enough delay to be annoying.

I meant to say depth of field, not field of view.

My digital microscope has no lag and brilliant resolution. You can easily solder under it just looking at the screen. Just don't get the super cheap ones but one for maybe 150€ or so.

You seen knowledgeable. I've used leaded solder in my bedroom / apartments since community college, usually with a fan in the room or a window open. What damage could have or has happened?

I'm no doctor, but if you've only done a few hours of this and you're 20+ it's probably no big deal. However, you are breathing lead vapor and it's not good for you (if you're at 100s of hours and 12yo that's really not good). If it gets on things you eat, it's also bad. The effects are permanent.

We had leaded (Ethyl) gasoline in cars which was banned 25 years ago and that had noticeable statistical effects on IQ an emotional regulation (violence) for more than a generation.

You're not breathing lead vapor. You're breathing flux vapor, which is probably not optimal either.

https://www.quora.com/Can-I-get-lead-poisoning-from-inhaling...

Yes but lead particulate is going every where and if you touch lips, You’re ingesting it.

The primary means of exposure in a lab setting is through ingestion of particulate matter by getting it on your food or clothes -> mouth

Well, like I said I'm no doctor, but I don't know that I'd use quora to make medical decisions.

Here's an environmental safety article from MIT. It mentions lead oxide fumes from soldering. What do I know other than the required lab safety training.

https://ehs.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/EHS-0167.pdf

It says that lead fumes are unlikely to be generated:

Based on standard soldering iron temperatures of 620°F-700°F and the melting point of lead (621°F), it is unlikely that lead fume will be generated during electronic soldering, unless the solder is heated to lead’s vaporization temperature of 3182°F.

Interesting that you skip right past the part that I mentioned about lead oxide fumes.

   "During the soldering process in the form of lead filler metals, lead oxide
   fumes are formed and excessive exposure to lead oxide fumes can result in
   lead poisoning."

It's right there and easy to read.

At hundreds of hours, you're fine. Honestly, even at thousands of hours, you're probably okay.

Most of the fumes come from the flux boiling way, not the solder itself. (Mind you, I still wouldn't recommend breathing flux fumes. Those are bad in their own way. Adequate ventilation is important!)

Lead is unequivocally bad for you, but the amount that actually enters your system from soldering activities is miniscule.

It's good to minimize these substances in our daily life since they do add up over decades. The problem with leaded gas in cars is that there were just so many cars out there burning the stuff. Duration of exposure and amount of exposure both matter.

That said... do wash your hands after handling leaded solder, especially before eating.

(I used to have a summer job in high school assembling circuit boards for an electronics test company. I easily clocked a couple hundred hours soldering under a magnifying lamp with leaded solder. I'm sure the burns I gave myself from accidently touching the soldering iron itself did more damage than the lead. :P)

> The problem with leaded gas in cars is that there were just so many cars out there burning the stuff. Duration of exposure and amount of exposure both matter.

The difference is not the amount of cars, but that the temperature and pressure in car engines makes lead vaporise, so it can be breathed in.

A soldering iron doesn't reach those temperatures (vaporising the lead is the opposite of what you want when soldering).

Depends, how much solder did you eat?

In all seriousness, very little. I would personally want more than just a bathroom fan to do fume evacuation. Outside on a patio/balcony is my usual spot. I also have a 120mm computer fan that I hacked onto a gooseneck mount so I can blow the fumes away from my face.

The times I can't be outside, usually due to weather, I use a table right in front of an open window, and one of those dual fan window fans set to exhaust mode, and that sucks the fumes outside effectively.

I'd call that a reasonably good setup, and, as a bonus, the fumes don't hit me directly in the face, which soldering fumes have a tendency to do.

I didn't think lead, in it's metallic form, had a particularly high toxicity. I thought it was lead salts that were the problem.

I mean, it depends. It's mostly dangerous to kids, because it's detrimental to brain development. Not exactly vitamins for anyone though.

Also something to remember about ingestion is that, lead only forms salts in acidic environments, and, your stomach is quite acidic, which is why it's such a problem. Combine that with lead accumulating in your body and, well, it's best to avoid it, and it's simple enough to avoid it.

The biggest danger that's specific to leaded solder is accidental ingestion. Both the common methods of cleaning your iron (damp sponge and brass wool) produce many tiny little balls of solder. They're difficult to see, and because they're round and dense they easily roll and bounce to unexpected places. They can get caught in your clothes and potentially end up falling in food.

The fumes are flux fumes, not lead fumes. They're still bad to breathe but not specific to leaded solder.

Interestingly enough, the leaded-solder topic is a hot-button issue in some online communities. People get angry about it, and I don't have an explanation for why.

As a (former) owner of a dogshit soldering iron, I think it makes sense. People with weaker irons struggle to work with unleaded solder and tend to write it off entirely mostly because of their equipment. If you have an appropriately hot iron, both types of solder will generally behave the same which makes it a bit of a no-brainer to use non-toxic solder.

That being said - leaded solder is easier to work with regardless of what iron you use. It's very easy to fix mistakes and even wicks up without a trace on most PCBs. I personally don't use it, but I think it's easy to see how people will blame their solder before their iron.

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