Your solder joints don’t actually look that bad. Ive seen much worse; and “works” is the gold standard anyway. You’re probably the only one that will see the board in person.
If you want advice, it looks like your iron was either too cold, or you didn’t work fast enough and your flux burned up before the joint set.
Mostly just visual in terms of shine vs matte. For the quality of the joint itself, lead-free has a higher melting point so you need more heat to keep it flowing nicely.
Your joints will do what they’re supposed so, so they’re fine. Chasing perfection is just a fun minigame.
Also it depends on the tip used for the soldering iron: those large surfaces have a lot more volume of metal that needs heating (plus you also need more volume of solder) so if one uses a conical tip it doesn’t transmit heat fast enough and you ended up with an irregular solder hill like that.
If you’re use to soldering smaller components, doing something like that is quite different and won’t come out as well until you get used to its peculiarities.
If you’re not at all used to soldering, that’s actually pretty good.
Totally agree on “works” being the gold standard, especially on a something like that which isn’t subject to significant mechanical forces (like, for example, a push switch would).
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Your solder joints don’t actually look that bad. Ive seen much worse; and “works” is the gold standard anyway. You’re probably the only one that will see the board in person.
If you want advice, it looks like your iron was either too cold, or you didn’t work fast enough and your flux burned up before the joint set.
It’s lead free solder. I think that affects how the joints look.
There are lots of LF alloys, some shiny some not. Your joints are fine, regardless of the alloy :)
Mostly just visual in terms of shine vs matte. For the quality of the joint itself, lead-free has a higher melting point so you need more heat to keep it flowing nicely.
Your joints will do what they’re supposed so, so they’re fine. Chasing perfection is just a fun minigame.
Chasing perfection was my sanity back when I was a welder.
Also it depends on the tip used for the soldering iron: those large surfaces have a lot more volume of metal that needs heating (plus you also need more volume of solder) so if one uses a conical tip it doesn’t transmit heat fast enough and you ended up with an irregular solder hill like that.
If you’re use to soldering smaller components, doing something like that is quite different and won’t come out as well until you get used to its peculiarities.
If you’re not at all used to soldering, that’s actually pretty good.
Totally agree on “works” being the gold standard, especially on a something like that which isn’t subject to significant mechanical forces (like, for example, a push switch would).