Designing a soldering iron for limited dexterity

Hi, I’m a student at Imperial College London studying Design Engineering. Three other students and I want to design a new soldering iron for people with limited dexterity, and more generally for everyone who would like soldering to be less fiddly. We find that even though we do not have limited dexterity soldering can be hard and we often get bad solder joints; so can only imagine what it’s like for those who do.

I wanted to message this forum in case anyone was interested in getting involved, either because you have limited dexterity (from age, disability, or anything really), or because you have some comments you’d like to share. At this stage we are not expecting any commitment, just any help we’d really appreciate!

Thank you very much,
Chris

For years I have been wondering if it would be feasible implementing something able to displace the iron along x and y coordinates and, once in place, the iron going down to make the necessary contact while the solder is applied at the same time.

What I cannot visualize is how to handle the inclination of the iron wrt the PCB.

Suffering of essential tremor, soldering, for me, means above all, lot of patience.

That is an interesting idea, having it so you can fix it in position and then bring it towards the board. We were thinking automatic solder dispensing would be useful as it gives an extra free hand/one less thing to think about.

We thought that if we could keep the iron hand held, but manage to deal with effects of tremors and limited movement, that would be ideal as it is more versatile and quicker to use, but that may not be practical.

I would be very interested to hear if you do anything whilst soldering to help deal with your tremors (such as resting your hand on an object, or changing your method of soldering)? And also, what would you say is the biggest limitation to you when it comes to soldering (e.g. is it hard to surface mount solder, are burns more common)?

Thank you so much to responding to me, it helps us so much!
Chris

chriskalo said:

I would be very interested to hear if you do anything whilst soldering to help deal with your tremors (such as resting your hand on an object, or changing your method of soldering)? And also, what would you say is the biggest limitation to you when it comes to soldering (e.g. is it hard to surface mount solder, are burns more common)?

Click to expand...

Instinctively I rest my right hand on the bench to minimize the effect. Since I still do thru hole or Manhattan style, I need to apply solder with my left one. For an unknown reason, tremor with this, es much less.

I suspect that using a chisel flat tip (even small) could help to minimize the effects in my case.

Far from SMD, since I am not complying with any specific compromise, for my last project I used this style for experimenting.

Solderin iron for limited dexterity is called solder oven or soldering bath.

Having thought about this for a while, I'd suggest that one of the most fundamental parts would be holders for either circuit board or individual components / wires, that could set them rigidly in the ideal orientation for the person doing the soldering.

eg. Something like spring loaded "V" slots to grip a PCB plus a couple of gooseneck alligator clips for steadying wires or a solder dispenser.
And the whole thing settable in any rotation or orientation.

I'm guessing, but I suspect one of the limitations for someone with restricted movement would not so much be where to move the iron tip, but getting both the position and ideal orientation while holding it steady, when trying to work with wires or a PCB that are laying on a bench or desk and can slide around?

That's very cool coming up with that method and it's interesting to see a solution. Is the chisel tip useful as you can rest it against the joint?

Would you say as someone who solders, you mainly use Manhattan style through hole soldering, so an iron that could only do this style wouldn't limit you on a regular bases?

MacIntoshCZ said:

Solderin iron for limited dexterity is called solder oven or soldering bath.

Click to expand...

Ah yes, I didn't think of that solution, although I still think there's something to be said for a hand held soldering iron.

rjenkinsgb said:

Having thought about this for a while, I'd suggest that one of the most fundamental parts would be holders for either circuit board or individual components / wires, that could set them rigidly in the ideal orientation for the person doing the soldering.

eg. Something like spring loaded "V" slots to grip a PCB plus a couple of gooseneck alligator clips for steadying wires or a solder dispenser.
And the whole thing settable in any rotation or orientation.

I'm guessing, but I suspect one of the limitations for someone with restricted movement would not so much be where to move the iron tip, but getting both the position and ideal orientation while holding it steady, when trying to work with wires or a PCB that are laying on a bench or desk and can slide around?

Click to expand...

Yes I agree, that fixing and holding is very important, and without that my soldering iron could be useless. That's a good insight, thank you. I know the holder that I use is a nightmare to get in the right position, I'm sure there are better ones than mine but I will search to see what currently exists.

But yes, fixings the parts in place would be very important to integrate into my soldering environment.

I think a solder feeding system that is stationary, a PCB that can be moved with an x-y platform. Then a chisel tip iron comes in to hit the soldering pad from above.
Once aligned,
1) solder unspools slightly to press against the pad-component lead junction.
2) iron drops down to pad-component lead junction opposite the solder feed. Or, if the user has one good hand, operation of soldering iron could be completely hand-held.
also, solder feed could be a foot pedal. There are so many options with "limited dexterity" are feed, breath in scope? Is computer vision in scope? (Look at a solder joint on a zoomed in monitor and track it to a cross-hair on screen to center where the solder will feed). You'll have to define what your skill level is to limit our imaginations of what is in scope as possible solutions.