More secrets of good assembling techniques

More secrets of good assembling techniques

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Hookup wires and jumpers.

As we are discussing some important assembling tips that is helpful for successful project building to give satisfactory performance. No doubt we are using PCB design to hook up components over the board for soldering thereby making sure electrical connectivity among the circuit elements namely the components, there are times and occasions to use hook up wires and jumpers on the PCB to make electrical connectivity.

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Jumpers

Jumpers are nothing but a small piece of wires connecting two contact points of the copper track of the PCB. Jumpers are necessary wherever the connections are crossing certain tracks to link two points. In the PCB design crossing of certain connections of track may be unavoidable. In such places small jumpers are used to connect two points for electrical connectivity. Care should be taken that the jumpers should not create new connection issues as it may short circuit or otherwise impaired the functioning of the circuit and its performance may be hampered.

As jumpers use normal single strand wire available as hook up wire in the market. This wire is sturdy, easy to manipulate and good soldering and connectivity properties. If the jumpers are lengthy to be used it is better to be covered with plastic sleeves. Usually jumper wires come with covered type and the same may be used. Please ensure the quality of the jumper wires as it should not be brittle or cut easily when handling. Otherwise snapping action of the jumpers may give annoying troubles later on when the gadget is on working. 

Connector terminals are to be cleaned before soldering.

Before soldering the jumpers, or connectors or any other components, the connecting points, rather terminals should be cleaned thoroughly and the only it should be soldered.  As I said earlier oily or greasy substance deposited on the connecting terminals has to be removed thoroughly before soldering. Otherwise the terminals may not be perfectly soldered resulting dry joints. We have already discussed the bad effects of dry joints earlier. As such the terminals of the components should be neatly and clearly scrapped with a knife or blade so that fresh shining metallic surface should be visible to make good soldering.  

Copper wire terminals must be scrapped to remove the enamel coating given while manufacturing. Then only good electrical contact can be established. The purpose of cleaning the terminals is to make the surface free from bad conductors. To clean the terminals soft or mild emery sheet may be used for effective cleaning when knife or blade is not readily available. Gentle scrapping with the sheet makes the job perfect.

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Tinning the terminals

It is a good practice to coat the terminals with solder before hand of soldering the component to the board. This makes the soldering job easier and quicker when soldering on PCB terminals with the components. This also saves the copper track of the board from peeling out due to unnecessary excess heat applied when soldering components without pre coating of the terminal ends with the solder.  

Hence cleaning the terminals and tinning with the lead are the two important tips for successful soldering. This makes the project to perform best. Many fail to follow these small but important tips and end in poor performance with lot of complications in future.

We shall continue to discuss some more important tips in our next post. Please give your valuable comments and suggestions.