Hello.
I’m MapleEngineer. I’m from Eastern Ontario and I’ve been soldering for over 40 years as a hobbyist. My user name is MapleEngineer because I’m an artisan maple syrup maker and design and build my own machinery and industrial controllers.
I, like just about everyone, started out with a pencil iron and a bit of solder in a clear plastic tube.
If you’re into electronics and soldering please subscribe and feel free to contribute and ask questions.
Thanks for starting this community! Maple syrup making sounds fun. What have been some of the most difficult reworks you’ve successfully completed?
Thanks for your interest. The most difficult reworks that I’ve done are the small, handheld gaming devices like the Atari Lynx and the NEC TurboExpress. They use SMD electrolytic capacitors and some of them are buried under silicone. I have to excavate them and desolder them without tweezers. I just bought a Hakko FM-203 DP which will take tweezers but I haven’t ordered them yet.
My largest build was the SixtyClone 250466 Commodore 64 motherboard clone.
Oh yeah, those potting/epoxy materials can be really annoying to remove. At work we have some prototypes that someone decided needed Silastic everywhere… so half of the debugging time is peeling that stuff away. At least that stuff in particular is easy to peel :)
In this case I believe that it was simply white silicone caulking. I’ve run into potting compounds and epoxies a number of times. There are apparently solvents for most potting compounds but I’ve never used them.
Sounds cool!
What kind of posts do you envision here?
Will you post some of your controllers/machinery?
Hi. Thanks!
I hope that people who are interested in electronics and soldering will post questions and pictures of their projects. I’ve got more than 40 years of experience but we all started with a first solder joint. I am trying to get a long post about tools and materials posted. I do plan to post pictures of some of my projects here, yes.
I hope this community will attract everyone from people just starting out with their first project to seasoned hobbyists like me to professionals. We can all help each other.
Damn. I just put a new jack in my guitar and didn’t take any pictures.
I’ll definitely contribute when I get another project on my bench
Awesome! Doing repairs yourself is the bomb. We all need to be self sufficient so that we can replace the jacks on our guitars in a zombie apocalypse.
Exactly. The stress of the end of the world makes it that much more important to make time to rock out 🤘
I have a long driveway and a clear shot from my daughter’s upstairs window. I’ve told my friends for years that if they plan to bug out to our place to bring food, water, their drugs, 12 ga shotgun shells and to dance up my driveway. Zombies don’t dance and I’m shooting anything that comes up my driveway not dancing.
