Techno Talk
Soldering on
Mark Nelson
What’s the oldest tool on your electronic workbench? In my case it’s the soldering iron, a sturdy
temperature-controlled example made by Oryx that I bought in the early 1970s. If you treat your iron
with care, it may well outlive you! Let’s delve a bit deeper.
I
have several irons on my
workbench, including five identical Oryx models, each equipped
with a different size of tip. They are
very robust, which must be why used
ones turn up regularly on eBay. If I see
them priced below £5, I snap them up
without further ado. But I also have
two Antex irons with tiny tips that I
use for soldering surface-mount parts.
I find this mixture of Antex and Oryx
entirely satisfactory.
Most of the electronicists I know are
equally partisan about the soldering
irons they use. Some refuse to use any
brand but Weller, whose irons seem to
be almost indestructible and infinitely repairable. However, probably the
majority of hobbyists are entirely satisfied with Antex, whose products are
keenly priced and very reliable. Other
British makes such as Oryx, Adamin
and Litesold have fallen by the wayside
during the last few decades, victims
perhaps of the over-supply of stupidly
cheap irons imported from the Far East,
made for people who value price over
robustness or personal safety.
Remarkably, the major names have
a reassuringly long history. Across the
Atlantic, Carl Weller patented the first
hand-soldering tool to heat and cool rapidly in 1941. Four years later he founded
the Weller Manufacturing Company
near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Close
behind him came the British firm Antex,
which claims over 70 years of progress. I say ‘British’, but the company
name in its early days was AngloNetherlands Technical Exchange Ltd
and I am not sure exactly what the
Dutch connection was. What’s not
in any doubt is that its products are
manufactured to international quality
standard ISO 9001:2015 and are fully
compliant with all European directives
on electrical safety and electromagnetic
compatibility. Another stalwart of the
soldering business is the firm called SR
Brewster, alias Brewsters Ltd (on the
web at: www.soldering-shop.co.uk).
Currently, they retail Antex and other
firms’ products (they used to offer their
10
own SRB brand irons, which looked
uncannily like those made by Antex
– both firms are based in Plymouth!).
I confess to having a high regard for
Brewsters, as they don’t sell rubbish
and crucially, they can still supply bits
for certain obsolete types of Oryx and
SRB soldering irons, which you would
be hard pressed to find anywhere else.
How to...
Talking of soldering, I assume that every reader of this illustrious magazine
knows how to solder, but amazingly
we can often find new knowledge in
books. As far as soldering goes, I reckon there are two ‘bibles’ that every
electronicist will find worth reading.
Reassuringly, neither of them will cost
you an arm and a leg.
One of them is the Basic Soldering
Guide by our own Alan Winstanley
(he is too modest to plug his own
book, so I’ll do it for him!). Published
in association with Antex Ltd, this
paperback is an indispensable guide
distilled from his 45 years of practical hands-on experience in electronics
and will be an invaluable guide for
anyone wanting to master the skills of
electronics soldering for themselves.
Its colour photography and crystalclear text make it ideal for all readers
– even better, it’s available from the
PE shop: http://bit.ly/AW-solder
The other title I commend equally
to readers is The Art of Soldering by
Richard Brewster, published by Bernard
Babani Publishing at £3.99 and now
in its eighth printing. It’s available on
Amazon and also from Brewsters Ltd.
Rot on
Now for a brief update on the DVD decay saga. A videophile reader writes in
that the problem is not as simple as it
first seemed. By accident, he checked
a disc that he had already tested and
declared unharmed. This second time
it failed the test. Further investigation,
playing through the disc from start
to finish, showed the disc had failed
completely. So, what does this mean?
‘It’s not just the case that a disc can
rot on the shelf for years. Playing it
once can finish it off! To date, the failure rate of Warner discs is about 4.6%.
Tests on Sony and Fox factory discs
thus far have been better. The worst
are the ‘made on demand’ discs that
are factory recorded onto blank DVD-R
media (ie, not pressed). One that I
bought for £14 in 2012 is now a coaster. It cuts out exactly halfway through.
I’ve tried chilling in the fridge, using
multiple drives, washing, but it’s no
use. What I still don’t know is if UK
products are affected. Time will tell,
but Warner USA-derived DVDs made
pre-2010 are all suspect,’ he says.
I recommend the website www.
freevideoworkshop.com/fix-dvd-rot/
which offers plenty of insights but little
comfort. If it’s a commercial DVD with
the dreaded rot, you can always go out
and buy another one. But DVDs with
family memories are irreplaceable.
So, don’t take any chances, it advises.
Act before it’s too late. Rip your DVDs
to a digital format now. Once you’ve
ripped your DVDs, you don’t have to
worry about DVD rot any longer. You
then have a backup copy of your DVD
which you can watch without a DVD
player on your PC or other devices. To
do this, you will need a PC and DVD
ripping software (just search Google
for ‘free DVD ripper’).
And finally
Have you heard about molecular memory? Eric Anslyn and his team at the
University of Texas are researching
the use of synthetic polymers of urethane-like plastics for information
storage. This molecular approach offers a particularly appealing solution
because it can retain information at
far higher densities than leading silicon-based technologies. ‘In theory,
any kind of information can be encoded in polymers,’ says Anslyn. ‘In
practical terms, we have seen books
and pictures, among many other
things, stored in molecules.’ More at:
http://bit.ly/pe-aug21-mem.
Practical Electronics | August | 2021
