Soldering Questions

[Schappy]

Im having a problem with wire breakage, especially with 24 gauge wire.

When you feed the wire through the pot do you solder on that side or the opposite side.

I have some wire from small bear that is prebonded.

Does this mean you dont have to tin your wire?

Is 22 or 24 gauge more common for wiring pedals?

[John Lyons]

I think you are bending the wire too much at the joint.
The smallbear pre bonded wire is pretined basically.
Just be a bit more careful with your moving the wires
around. #24 is probably the most common size.
I use #22 though...

[Schappy]

That may be my problem.

Ive been bending the wire over the pot eyelet.

When I learned to solder I read it was important to make a good connection before applying the solder.

Do you just bend the wire just a tad to ensure contact with the pot eyelet?

Which side do you solder from?

Ive also had some issues with wires breaking off the PCB.

[petemoore]

  Avoid sharp bend points, ease them near where wire ends are anchored.
  Don't bend or twist the wires as much as possible.
  Pretinned was quicker to work with IME.
  Strategies:
  Soldering offboard wiring last.
  Mount the board, then solder to anchored component lugs.
  It is possible to avoid 10 wire quandries of same color coming from the bottom of a mounted board by having some of the wires be identifiable by having the connect from the component side, otherwise the DMM can be used to find thier nodes.
 

[Schappy]

Thanks for the info guys.

Ive been frustrated for a awhile now when boxing up effects because ultimately I always break a wire or two and have to pull the whole thing out.

This should help.

petemoore,
Are you saying you sometimes wire the PCB from underneath the board?

[petemoore]

Are you saying you sometimes wire the PCB from underneath the board?
  Yep, have had wires that just come from somewhere that look exactly like the other wire.
  One way to prevent this is to use color-coded wire.
  Another is to use the component lead of say resistor to which offboard wires can be attached/connected/identified by node easily later.

[tiges_ tendres]

It sounds to me like you might be compromising the wire when you strip off the insulation.  Be careful not to cut to far into the insulation otherwise you get little nicks in the wire which will cause more common breaks when you bend the wire.

[petemoore]

  The SB tinned wire I used stripped very easily without use of sharp edges.

[Schappy]

When you put the wires in through the top of the board you have just the wire on the opposite side to solder to the board.

Putting the wire through the bottom seems a little trickier.

Any Tips?
Do you do this with just the pots or all offboard wiring?

[jkokura]

Chances are you fabbed PCB board to do it this way. Alternately, you could solder on the other side by not pushing the wire in all the way to the copper. This would leave you some room to solder the board, but the insulation would be a little ways away from the board.

Jacob

[MmmPedals]

It sounds to me like you might be compromising the wire when you strip off the insulation.  Be careful not to cut to far into the insulation otherwise you get little nicks in the wire which will cause more common breaks when you bend the wire.

This would be my first guess at the culprit. although bending wires could weaken them i doubt one bend especially with the smallbear stuff would do it.
How do you strip the insulation?

[Schappy]

I have found the wire too small to only use my wire strippers.

I put small pressure on the wire with the wire strippers then pull of the covering with my teeth usually.

[R.G.]

There is a little-known but superior alternative. The only disadvantage is that it costs money.

As noted, your problem is likely to be nicking the wire when stripping it. The complete cure for that is thermal wire strippers.

I have both tweezer style and V-blade style thermal strippers. They simply do not nick the wire, so breakage from nicking is completely eliminated. I recommend the Patco PTS-10. I've posted about it before here.

[stringsthings]

There is a little-known but superior alternative. The only disadvantage is that it costs money.

As noted, your problem is likely to be nicking the wire when stripping it. The complete cure for that is thermal wire strippers.

I have both tweezer style and V-blade style thermal strippers. They simply do not nick the wire, so breakage from nicking is completely eliminated. I recommend the Patco PTS-10. I've posted about it before here.

thanks R.G. ... that's cool ... i've never heard of that ....  definitely something i'm going to keep in mind for the future ...

[Schappy]

My wire strippers arent marked for gauge. Im going to buy a better one.

The thermal stripper looks cool but dont have the cash right now.