I'm just curious as to how I can learn and get experience at soldering and repairing computer parts. I feel that soldering is a pretty useful skill in the electronics world, and could have probably saved me hundreds in the past. I just don't know where to start, and I have nothing to repair making learning a lot more difficult. Any advice on where to start learning to repair computer parts? I realize that there are Youtube videos, but l don't have the equipment, nor the broken parts to repair.
Computer repair business is dead business, so no point in investing in that. However, repair skills are useful skills to have.
It is very simple procedure, more often then not, the hardest part of repair is to diagnose malfunction. Not all people can do soldering with limited/standard equipment, for few factors, hands are not that stable and precise for that work, or their vision is damaged, so they can't see well (even with glasses), so have that on mind, if you have one of those problems, it is probably wasting of time, beyond some "larger" stuff repair at home.
With all those above requirements fulfilled, soldering is very simple procedure, and it requires only two tools for tiny contacts, precise (sharp) soldering iron (don't use soldering gun), flux, solder and pump, and you are good to go.
You don't need broken parts for practise, you can try to create something, and alongside practise on it.
It also depends on your age, we all start disassembling electronics at very young age (3-4 years old) :). But assembling usually happens few years latter. I'm having those skills since young age, and I did not find them very useful tbh., it was useful in teenage years for creating amplifiers, equilizers, sound boxes etc., and did bring even some profit, but, times are changed. Sure it is nice to know to fix something, but often, with machine contacts, you (or anyone) as human can't do much about it in modern electronics.
You may also need goggles to protect your eyes, and the fan close to your pcb so it extracts all the stuff. A damp sponge on the side too is good, because you can quickly swipe it with the iron to clean the tip.
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I'd recommend Getting a cheap soldering iron ($15-25) for starters Find an old PCB and some wire and practice making joints. Also experiment with circuits. It's a lot of fun stuff.
Computer repair isn't a good course of action. It's not worth it imo, Or probably not in the way you're thinking.
Tips on how to solder with finesse can be found online everywhere.
I learned to solder from my dad, He was good but not the best. I learned and like him am not neat. But I've grown to love it.
Since then I bought my own Iron, Stand (with sponge), Flux, and Solder.
I use it every so often to add LEDs to a connection or mod peripherals. I changed the LEDs & Switches on my orbweaver
I actually just used mine the other day to [more] LEDs to my case.
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Buy an adjustable soldering iron and burn stuff. Or like buy a broken headset from someone and see if you can fix it.
Cheap solder kit, then grab some cheap connectors and some stereo cable and make cables for everyone or ask around for dead gear - tv's, gpu's any thing really. I learnt how to solder from fixing dead monitors. Oh yeah grab one of those multi arm things that has a magnifying glass in the middle. They're worth their weight in gold.
Any muso mates? Then make some mono cables and make some cash.
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Did you fix any CRT monitors? Because I'd like to know how you're still alive
Nah, stayed right away from that crt junk.
You can buy a cheap diy kit for practise. A fun project is a good way to learn as it is both motivation and rewarding. You can find i finite options of cheap kits online. Maybe a diy arduino would be a nice starting point.
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I am going to be learning too soon. I am going to first mod.my keyboard, and then build another entirely new one as well. Oh and fix my bass.
EevBlog on YouTube has very good videos on soldering, even for chips and surface mount components.
This statement is very true, but I would add that that curiosity about how things work, the dis-assembly and reassembly leads to other things beyond electronics, learning how things work is a fundamental skill in trouble shooting problems, it is a skill that carries over in life to everything from fixing your own car, computer, or relationship (yea it's a stretch, but still true) If you have that curiosity, are good with your hands, and have the mental capacity to learn you'll never be without a job or the satisfaction of repairing things of which electronics is just one aspect.
One more thing is that with these skills when your a home owner they will save you thousands of dollars by being knowledgeable about how plumbing, electrical, etc work you'll have the ability with the knowledge and basic tool to do your own repairs, and it all starts with the curiosity about how something works and the desire to tear it apart and put it back together again it makes no difference if it's a PCB or a lawnmower.
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As a kid, I wasted all my time playing video games haha. I didn't start wanting to fix or modify everything myself until a few years ago. I guess better late than never though. Aside from my alarm clock, there isn't a single piece of electronics that I own that I haven't tried to modify. Now I just want to take it a little bit further.
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You mean like the stuff you see at the back of radio shack? Well, saw at the back of Radio Shack.
When I was a kid there was a company called Heathkit where you could buy kits to build everything from a oscilloscope, stereo receiver, or ham radio, you could buy the kits in different forms from installing the components on a PCB to just assembly of the separate components.
And of course Radio Shack sold lots of simple electronic kits to build simple gadgets which was basically the bare PCB (with traces) and all the components, it was a good way to hone your soldering skills and also learn about how different circuits worked. Radio Shack is still going to be around and is still selling kits, I'm sure a google search would turn up other vendors selling electronic kits also.
But CRTs are still the best display tech until OLED gets down in price.
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From what I understand, Radioshack had to get rid of all the fun stuff because of safety concerns, correct? Kinda like how they banned those junior chemist sets (That's probably a good thing though haha).
As for getting stuff to repair, I have an old 100 Mbps networking card that has a few blown capacitors. Guess I could start with that. Now I just need to get a soldering kit and a multimeter.
Microcenter sells Soldering irons and all that fun stuff IF you live close to one.
They also sell (small) model rockets and extra engines separately.
Too bad the closest Microcenter is two states away haha.
These guys have a lot of DIY projects and other cool electronic stuffs.
http://www.rpelectronics.com/
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Thinking about picking up a Raspberry Pi or some other dev board. Been looking through some really cool projects with the Pi that involve soldering and coding.