r/soldering • u/bulldoggemaster • 20h ago

Looking to start my kids with a hobby and learn myself. Soldering Newbie Requesting Direction | Help

So I’m looking at what kit to buy for myself and the kids to do some projects they can run with, if they get into it, I’m more than willing to help them with better equipment later on.

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

3

u/CaptCaffeine 19h ago

If you're willing to buy from Aliexpress, there are a lot of small fun DIY projects (Xmas trees, pendulums, digital clocks, etc).

2

u/bigrealaccount 18h ago

Give them a few easy soldering practise projects, lots of starter kits on amazon and aliexpress. Then some desoldering practise projects, maybe a controller hall effect replacement with wick?

Then maybe let them learn SMD hot air desoldering and soldering. Alongside this how to use a multimeter, how to detect grounds. Then say if they manage to fix a broken console/laptop/device etc., they can have it. I think that's pretty good motivation

Kind of outside the scope of your question but if my parents said I could get a console for free as long as I fixed it myself, I would be fixing shit way earlier than I am now

1

u/physical0 4h ago

For starters, don't buy a kit. All of the soldering kits that i'm aware of are bad. They're all a collection of the most cheap tools that a vendor can shove into a box to try to convince uninformed buyers that quantity > quality.

I'd suggest you start with something like a KSGER T12 station. They're pretty inexpensive and quite capable. You can find them for around $40-$50. If this is more than you anticipated spending on the hobby, you might wanna rethink your budget. There are cheaper irons out there, but they will add considerable frustration and make learning much slower.

When I was young, my dad taught me how to solder. He was in the Navy and worked on Radar. His kit was nice. When I moved out and started trying to work on my own, I couldn't afford much and bought a bunch of cheap tools and the quality of my work declined a lot. I hadn't realized how much my tools mattered until I saw for myself. I abandoned soldering because I was disappointed in myself. A few years later, I got pushed into repairing Irrigation controllers, picked up a decent kit, and rediscovered the joy of it all.