For light 'incidental' hobby soldering go with the cheapest soldering iron you can find, I'm using a €7 one that works just fine. Sure it will probably break down after using it 20 times, but since I solder about twice a year...

I wanted some thing I could in theory own for decades. As for the actual solder.......... whats the specs I should look for?

Rosin core solder should be just fine. Get a higher gauge solder if you can as it is much easier to work with than the bulky lower gauge stuff.

Hey jasonkc25, great work! You inspired me to try this on one of my own VSDs and it worked really well...until I flipped the "on" switch and nothing happened. I'm not ashamed to say I followed your example step-by-step, but since I'm a noob I messed it up somehow. Any pointers or solutions to common mistakes? Thanks in advance.

Hey jasonkc25, great work! You inspired me to try this on one of my own VSDs and it worked really well...until I flipped the "on" switch and nothing happened. I'm not ashamed to say I followed your example step-by-step, but since I'm a noob I messed it up somehow. Any pointers or solutions to common mistakes? Thanks in advance.

I'd suspect you have a loose wire or you connected the wrong end of a diode somewhere. If you have a meter you can trace your voltages.

Sorry... I troubleshoot electrical equipment for a living. Just helping out.

Fortunately, these are pretty simple circuits. My guess, assuming you don't have a loose wire as Stasy said, you may have either have a wire crossed somewhere making a short or the first or last LED in series is wired the wrong way. Meaning you have the positive going to the negative, etc... These LED's have polarity and they're small enough it's pretty easy to get them messed up.

J

Love the LEDs, dude! Class bit of upgrading!

Oh no, that is insulation!!! I meant that you will find higher gauge wire that is bare....and then there is magnet wire that looks bare but is actually insulated by a coating. If it looks bare and isn't magnet wire...it's not insulated.

Sorry for the confusion.

As for glue guns...no idea...I have a cheap hobby glue gun from Michaels or something and it can squeeze out a little drop that does nicely.

Okay, just pulled the trigger on some 30g magnet wire on ebay, how important or convenient is it to have a color for positive and a color for negative?

So now I have the wire, the battery holder. Still need the LEDs and a solder iron.

Why would you recommend a digital iron over a substantially cheaper "standard" one?

Sorry for all the questions, you're a big help though

The magnet wire I bought came with a red spool and a green spool. It is helpful in determining which wire is positive and which one is negative, but not required.

I bought a digital iron just because that was the best one Radio Shack had on hand at the time. It was either that or a 10 dollar cheap-o iron which I highly recommend against.

It's a very nice iron but probably overkill.

The advantage of a digital iron is that you can program preset temps, and the Radio Shack one tells you the actual temp of the iron as it heats up...which isn't all that necessary.

From what I understand this one is very nice as well and Weller is a really good brand: http://amzn.com/B000AS28UC

If I had to choose between the Radio Shack one and the Hakko one (http://amzn.com/B00ANZRT4M) I'd choose the Hakko purely because it's gotten better reviews.

Hope that helps.

Man o Man

10 years experience doing electronics repair here, Weller is an excellent brand and even the one you listed is overkill for tacking a few discrete components together with lengths of wire. That Hakko model is nice if you're doing *a lot* of printed circuit board work with small components. Frankly the digital control is more likely to die on you at some point thank a simple & reliable fixed temp iron or analog adjustable like the Weller.

For a project like this, a simple cheap iron http://www.frys.com/product/2258018?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PGwith a small tip will be fine (you don't need many watts for fine wire and small components).

Technique (heat the component until the solder flows freely - don't heat solder directly; don't use too much solder and create bridges; clean the contact points before soldering - don't just melt the insulation off your wires) is so much more important to getting a good result.

Buy a simple small iron and use the savings to finance wave 2.

Ew magnet wire, otherwise, very nice job!

Why not just use a thin-coated (PFTE?), solid 32AWG wire? It'll bend pretty easy in the insulation and can go where you want. I'm always scared when I burn insulation.

Have you thought about placing an external switch? Clearly your design works well, but just am wondering if you had thought about it at all?

Ew magnet wire, otherwise, very nice job!

Why not just use a thin-coated (PFTE?), solid 32AWG wire? It'll bend pretty easy in the insulation and can go where you want. I'm always scared when I burn insulation.

Have you thought about placing an external switch? Clearly your design works well, but just am wondering if you had thought about it at all?

I have no good reason for the use of magnet wire other than I had used it in the past in a different application with good results. Granted that application was in regards to saving weight by not using PFTE insulated wire in a 40-gram micro-heli.

As for adding an external switch...I thought about it but decided the simplest route was easiest. Since I already had to crack open the model to wire it up, there was no loss in putting the switch there. It takes 5 seconds to pull off the top, flip the switch and put the top back on.

10 years experience doing electronics repair here, Weller is an excellent brand and even the one you listed is overkill for tacking a few discrete components together with lengths of wire. That Hakko model is nice if you're doing *a lot* of printed circuit board work with small components. Frankly the digital control is more likely to die on you at some point thank a simple & reliable fixed temp iron or analog adjustable like the Weller.

For a project like this, a simple cheap iron http://www.frys.com/product/2258018?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PGwith a small tip will be fine (you don't need many watts for fine wire and small components).

Technique (heat the component until the solder flows freely - don't heat solder directly; don't use too much solder and create bridges; clean the contact points before soldering - don't just melt the insulation off your wires) is so much more important to getting a good result.

Buy a simple small iron and use the savings to finance wave 2.

I'll admit you probably know a lot better than I.

However, I have had a couple of cheap ten dollar soldering irons throughout the years and they were always a practice in frustration. So I finally upgraded to a more robust solution and for me it made all the difference in the world.

Thanks for the great post. Helped me a lot in my first mod