Reflow Soldering Workshop
Wednesday the 29th of January, we held a little soldering workshop in DoES Liverpool. DoES is a shared workshop and coworking space run by and for the community, and some of what we could contribute was putting on this workshop in tandem with MCQN (with special thanks to Terry and Paul!).
The plan was reasonably simple (isn’t it always? isn’t that how they get you?) - run a three-hour drop-in workshop for people who wanted a go at reflow and regular soldering, with MCQN boards that needed doing anyway, and with some STEAMengineers boards for those willing to part with a few quid to take something home with them.
And it might sound like I’m saying it went badly, but it didn’t! It was a busy, affirming, fun evening and people came away from it having learned something, sometimes having explored a new space, and having socialised with likeminded folks. But we did learn a few new tricks…
- If you intend for it to be a drop-in workshop… you should communicate that literally anywhere at all. We forgot, so everyone turned up at 6!
- If you’re going to do soldering, you need Paul to be there because he is both incredibly talented and as always, unfailingly kind.
- Terry is a literal lifesaver! He took the people who were new to DoES on an extended tour of the space, and even gave them all a lasercutter induction.
Chris had set up some stations where we could stencil the solder paste onto the boards, we had the components ready, and we were off. Our main bottleneck was the reflow oven - each bake takes 7 minutes and can hold 2 of the boards we were using (regardless of whether it was a MCQN board or a STEAMengineers one#). Luckily, everyone was happy to learn and socialise, and it became a really fun event.
Adrian and Paul got stuck in too, and everyone seemed to go home happy! We’re looking forward to doing more, because we’d like to share more of our knowledge and we’d like to bring more people into DoES to become part of the community :)