Soldering for spacecraft: A 60+ year old educational video

[prfesser]

OldGuys™ will remember the style of instructional video from the 50s and 60s in this link . A very interesting overview of important soldering techniques, from the days when every electronic connection in a spacecraft was hand-soldered. A wire stripper that has to be calibrated---every day!--for the wire size.

 

[cerving]

I like the part near the very end where Mac becomes an inspector, and he takes a PC board from one of the assemblers with his bare hands, instead of wearing cotton gloves like the assemblers. Instant contamination of the bare copper board.

Nowadays, boards are all pre-tinned and solder masked, no more of that "clean the pads with an eraser". That would be really hard to do with SMT parts without destroying the pads...

 

[jqavins]

Some things change, and some things never do. "You can't inspect in quality" is still a saying, and is still one that's needed, as there are still folks who think you can.