Basic Indoor Soldering Station Setup

Makers today design, build and, recycle their PCB boards. Needless to say, if you are soldering inside, it is your responsibility for the safety of your family and everyone around you. I want to show you how to set up a safe working environment, so I put on a list of must-have items for indoor soldering that focus on safety and organization. A good trace that every Maker should have is abling to keep track of your parts, tools and, equipment. Especially, if you want to repair old circuit boards or old phones where the manufactory stops making replacement parts. On top of that, with a nice and neat working area, you can also take a good looking picture for your project page.
The list of items below will be rated by their importance regarding our focus on safety and organization.

1. Fume Extractor

2. Soldering Station

3. Silicone Workmat

4. Hot air gun

5. Lamp with LED and magnifier

6. Anti Static Anti Magnetic Tweezer Set

7. Soldering tip

One of the must-have items for an indoor soldering station that overlooks most of the time is a fume extractor. The fume extractor is responsible for sucking the air around the soldering area and filter the air. This requires a large fan to provide a sufficient level of airflow, one can also set the fume extractor over the top of the working area, take advantage of the fact that smoke would flow upward.
The fume extractor is quite loud, however, the fume extractor needs to be loud. As mentioned before, the fan on the fume extractor needs to provide a strong level of airflow to suck the air through the filter. If you worry that friends or family bother about the loud fan, kindly explain to them that the soldering smoke could be circulating indoor for hours after a soldering job.

I know this sounds like an obvious one, however, a reliable and durable soldering station is not something to overlook. One of the common ways to rate a soldering station is how fast it heats up and how the soldering iron's temperature varies over the soldering duration. Another must-have in a soldering station is a digital display. This feature will provide users the ability to know what is the temperature that they are working with and preventing cold solder.

I have been using this CSI Premier 75W for the last three years and, I have no complaints since it never lets me down. The unit has three temperature memory settings, I found this very useful when I find a perfect temperature that I comfortable to work with. Investing in a reliable and durable soldering station is something not to think over. A reliable soldering station will save you the time of repair cold soldering join, burn project and question yourself if the soldering iron is hot enough ( all from personal experiences :)

This is something new that I try so I am very excited to share my opinion about this workmat since I have been using the legendary green cutting mat for years.

This silicon workmat is different from the common workmat where the mat comes with cut-out areas for your variety of tools, accessories, screws and, a cutout area for a circuit board. Furthermore, these screw areas have numbers to keep track of the screw position and order of the screws for a more delicate repair project.

I don't really have a need for these screw position cutouts since I am not repairing the phone's motherboard at the moment. However, the larger magnetic cutouts are very useful especially with resistors, capacitors, locking rings, and large screws.

I found my area much cleaner and I am not finding random screws on the ground is a plus.

A hot air gun is a must-have for any surface mount project where users require to remove small delicate components that cannot contact directly with a soldering iron. Furthermore, the hot air gun can use to reflow the replacement component to the circuit board.

The hot air is daily similar to the soldering iron, therefore, we can use the same way we rate the soldering iron for the hot air gun, which is how quick it heats up and how the temperature during usage duration. I truly believe a picture speaks thousands of words so, I will attach a short clip below to show how fast this hot air heats up.

As a technician myself, I can vow for this equipment will improve working conditions greatly. The operator will not have to squinch to try to see better if the component makes good contact during and after reflow. The LED lamp can also act as a barrier between the operator and the solder fume. This will help the operator to get closer to the soldering area if needed.

When you start to work with delicate but yet high-temperature components, you learn to use a tweezer, another personal experience here. The tweezer not just helpful during a reflow process, the tweezer can also get the wire around the corner.

The tweezer is especially useful when the operator needs to use a desoldering wire in a tight area. These soldering wires would need to get hot sufficiently before the solder seep upward the wire.

Let's talk about getting the right soldering tip for the right soldering job. The choosing soldering tip is all about personal preference and, you would need to try it out yourself. The topic of, the correct soldering tip for the soldering job has been a good debate topic here on Instructable if you are interested.

I personally like the T-I and T-B from the Ten Tips Set since I can do most of my repair work with and yet soldering small senor module to my Arduino project. However, it depends on the soldering temperature and soldering area. For instance, you cannot use the T-B under 300 degrees Celcius for a ten gauge wire and expect good soldering joint.

As a Maker myself, I feel that is my responsibility to keep the air in my house clean and my family's member health. It doesn't matter if it is a quick solder job or an hour-long project, I will make sure my fume extractor turns on before I turn on the soldering station and, there will be no exception. I will make sure my passion will not cause any negative effect to any of my family's health, especially during this pandemic time.
Furthermore, I will make sure the working environment is comfortable and organize since these projects could take weeks to months to complete. You do not want to buy ten replacement screws for one missing one but, they don't sell one M2x4. I urge you to practice the same safety protocol to ensure yours loves one access to clean air.