Especially, because these LED strips have only a small amount of exposed copper to terminate, the plastic insulation around that point is easily damaged with too much heat exposure. ![]() If the wire or terminal is not soldered quickly enough, damage could occur because heat could reach sensitive areas. Attempting to heat the wire without having good heat transfer, will waste your time and could even cause damage to the assembly, because heat will expand over an area over time. For ages, the theory that heating a wire or terminal with the iron, waiting for the wire to heat enough to melt the solder, was the proper way. This is great stuff! Thanks for sharing!įine Instructible, except for one point on soldering. Liquid tape also seals the part you have to cut open to access the solder pads in waterproof LED strips, so you won’t lose the waterproofing properties of those strips. It’s also the most effective way i’ve found of securing solder points since it is essentially gluing them into place and putting a solid isolation barrier between them. One way that I differed from what you did: Instead of heat shrink tubing, I sealed my solders with liquid electrical tape, which is 100% effective, and very easy. It’s worth spending a few seconds at that point to verify your work before covering and securing it. One suggestion that I have: I would encourage people to us a multimeter after soldering to make sure there isn’t accidental connectivity between the newly soldered adjacent pads. Nobody else seems to mention that they really don’t work. I was glad to see someone else have the same experience. They aren’t reliable, so you mostly end up with a false sense of hope when you buy them. The surprising thing I discovered is: Don’t waste Your money on solderless connectors. Great info! I just soldered a bunch of these and am doing an instructable on a different topic, but felt compelled to write about 10 extra pages with all these tips. ![]() Something like this would also work if you want wireless control of the colors.) įor this tutorial, I also got some RGBW LED Strip tape from the same company - but these same steps could also be used for soldering standard RGB led tape or white/single color LED strips. Multi-channel LED Controller dimmer (I have one that came from this website. ![]() A 5-conductor flat LED extension wire works nicely for this kind of stuff. Makes things go faster, and keeps wires looking neat) Wire strippers (Note on this - when soldering RGB and RGBW LED Strip Tape, i've used a multi-conductor wire stripper (like the one found here or here) to strip back all the wires at one time.Helping hands tool (not necessary but helpful - hence the name).Solder with flux - I recommend a Sn60 / Pb40 mix solder, with flux.soldering iron (I use a Metcal solder iron, but a lower wattage 15-25 watt soldering iron should also work if you're careful).Before jumping into soldering the LED strips - I double checked that I had all the parts on hand.
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