How do you wire up Kobaru stuff?

[Martijn Meerts]

sorry I have to disagree, but you can do simple soldering of wires together with the cheapest of soldering irons, ive done it for decades on many many different ones. if thats all you are going to do you really dont need to spend a lot on an iron. Keikyu sounded like he was just going to solder a few wires and was not into spending much money. so you can get by cheap and easy until (and if) he gets into other more complicated projects.

 

of course if you are doing other more delicate things then then a nicer tool becomes necessity. nicer iron is always better, but not a necessity, IMHO, for soldering a few wires now and then.

 

jeff

 

True.. Until you need to solder a wire to a rail ;)

 

That said, I've probably had about 10 cheap irons, all of which went bad pretty quick, 1 slightly more expensive one which worked great for most things (and which I still use occasionally), and now a semi-pro one which I really needed for decoder installs and the brass kits.

 

My father also had a fairly expensive one which failed miserably at some point. The tip actually got red hot and melted half the insulation around it ..

[cteno4]

ive actually had the most issues with the most expensive ones ive owned and those aint cheap for good temp controlled ones. probably had a couple cheapos die, but many others have just lasted and lasted, like i said even though very few uses for them anymore here i cant bear to toss em! 

 

yeah dcc and brass need good temp control and proper sized and shaped tips to do them right!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Keikyu]

I'm not exactly looking for an expensive soldering thing, it's not something I'd be needing often at this stage but maybe in future when i decide to have a full layout I could make more use of a decent soldering iron.

 

And nah, I'm not in the US unfortunately.

[Lawrence]

Lawrence,

 

the stuff i was going to send is very simple stuff with battery or power supply, switch, pot, and some simple connector systems. nothing very fancy! ive been meaning to write these up and do some good pictures to post.

 

jeff

 

Well here is a perfect excuse to do them then :)

[cteno4]

Lawrence,

 

ok you got me, ill get on it! its been sitting here for months to document up. been playing with using PC pin connectors for a long time to make little plugs and such as well for leds. started on the project a couple of years back for friends into 144 scale doll house modeling that wanted some little LED systems but were scared of wiring and electronics! the cheap little experiment pc boards are great to use to whack up to mount things on. parts can be had very cheap on ebay if you search well and also wait a little (for some reason prices cycle on stuff like this.)

 

main thing i wanted to get folks into was turning down the mini suns in their projects. many times a white led at 20ma/3v is just way way way too bright for a scene in a building, especially if you have 3 or 4 of them. tuning each just right can really make a dramatic difference on how it looks and make the glowing, radioactive walls go away w/o having to do heavy metal linings!

 

at some point i may make some for sale as many just dont want to build their own and want something turnkey and most solutions out there are really not a great value, versatility, or size

 

cheers

 

jeff.

[Lawrence]

Lawrence,

 

ok you got me, ill get on it! its been sitting here for months to document up. been playing with using PC pin connectors for a long time to make little plugs and such as well for leds. started on the project a couple of years back for friends into 144 scale doll house modeling that wanted some little LED systems but were scared of wiring and electronics! the cheap little experiment pc boards are great to use to whack up to mount things on. parts can be had very cheap on ebay if you search well and also wait a little (for some reason prices cycle on stuff like this.)

 

main thing i wanted to get folks into was turning down the mini suns in their projects. many times a white led at 20ma/3v is just way way way too bright for a scene in a building, especially if you have 3 or 4 of them. tuning each just right can really make a dramatic difference on how it looks and make the glowing, radioactive walls go away w/o having to do heavy metal linings!

 

at some point i may make some for sale as many just dont want to build their own and want something turnkey and most solutions out there are really not a great value, versatility, or size

 

cheers

 

jeff.

Quite agree Jeff, I have used a mix of bright and warm whites with a 1k resistor off a 12v supply to give a nice blend of lighting, using the 1206 smd LEDs it is a little tricky to attack the lens with wet and dry to diffuse the light but easy enough to do on a standard lens.

Look forward to seeing what you come up with.

[KenS]

I used a cheap Radio Shack soldering iron for years, but I'll second Lawrence's statement.  A good iron beats a cheap one any day. Weller is a bit expensive, but there's value for the cost.

 

I've built two PCs for gaming use without ever using a soldering iron though.  And if all you're doing is soldering resistors to LEDs, you may not want to spend a lot of money. But even if you don't buy a Weller, avoid getting the cheapest iron you see. Get a good 20-30 W pencil iron that's comfortable to hold. And don't forget to wear safety glasses (or at least some kind of glasses). Hot solder on your skin hurts.  Hot solder in an eye is one of those things the emergency room can't fix.