It’s this:
There’s also those heat-gun-melted butt splice connectors that have solder inside.
I have the crimp kind for house wiring but I don’t trust those for safety-critical stuff not to pull apart and to have a perfect electrical connection.
My 2 cents. With the fine wire I usually spread it out as much as possible on both cables then push them together. Then I’ll just squash it all up firmly with my fingers, add a heap of flux and solder together. Yes it’s a bit of a bulge but still less than side by side like you’ve done.
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My trick is to use flux. Not as much for it’s intended purpose but basically as hair gel to stick all the wires together. I find difficult splices like this are muuuch easier with a little flux to glue all the strands in place. You can smooth and even clamp the joint with pliers a few times to get it smaller, before soldering.
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kinda off topic kinda not, hope it can stay
so this question bugs my mind for a while now. how the through-hole components can coexists with smd components? Let me explain what I mean. So here is this picture for example
The green connector seems like a through-hole component but I see a trace is coming out from beneath it and goes towards the chip. But the connection point supposed to be the on “B” side of the PCB while this trace and the chip is in the “A” side. How are they connected? Via via(pun intended)?
How does the electrical stuff goes from the solder point to the trace?
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Yes.
That copper-lined “via” that goes to both sides of the circuit board, that the connector’s pin gets soldered into, allows traces on both sides of the circuit board.
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For some reason I thought a via is thicker so there wont be enough space for it under any component. I checked a dozen more pictures of pcb’s and looks like somehow I overlooked how thin they are.
Thanks for clearing it up 
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I made a video
Excuse the shaky hands, it was pre-beer-o-clock
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corporate training vid from the 80s > today’s youtubers. 
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My only problem with your method is how close your hand is to the metal solder area. Although I have burned my finger tips off too many times by touching bullet or other connectors too soon after soldering them. Those fuckers stay hot for way longer than you’d think after soldering. My iron cools down faster than they do 
Everything else you did is exactly how I soldered up my connectors though 
Haha yeah you know about it if you get a bit of solder drip onto you
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I always use the second arm of my helping hand to hold on one of the contacts then turn it 180° and do the last wire by holding on the other one, avoids having to hold it with your finger
I kinda like holding it cos i can feel if it seated in the cup nicely
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Figured this would belong here as an example of how bad soldering can kill a device.
I didn’t get a photo before fixing it because past me is dumb, but I just fixed this little light by just redoing the hand soldered wires on it. They were previously all showing signs of being cold solder joints/dull solder joints but they were all strong enough to hold the wires in place. The light was not turning on at all before.
I decided to just try re-flowing the solder and adding some flux to see if that would fix it. which it did and now it works as intended. Even if you solder point is holding up to the pull test doesn’t mean it is a good joint. (usually the cold solder joints fail the wire pull test. Honestly, I’m not sure how these passed it with cold/dull solder)
I was told that this is an expensive light and that they normally work very well for duct work. I was given it as is and told even if I fixed it I could keep it. Pretty sure my land lord has bought several of these head lights before or someone else in the industry recommended them so it was odd that one was dead on arrival. My first guess was a bad solder joint before even opening it up and turns out I was right.
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Time stamped to title info
huh
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Interesting! But is it a solution searching for a problem?
I would hate to wait two seconds between some joints and looking away to see how well I did for each joint isn’t good. The Metcal feedback (tip color flash) seems much more convenient.
And I find a visual check of every joint after soldering the board to be very easy and something I would do anyway.
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This thread belongs in the citadel
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I’ve got this station since about a year. Very happy with it
I don’t use the solder assistant very often but it’s a nice feature for the nerd in me.
I reckon It’s targeted at industrial and learning situations. For a newbie to soldering it’s pretty cool to have some visualization of what’s going on.
If you have any questions about it just ask ^^
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Just saw this video thumbnail - not sure if it’s been mentioned earlier in the thread, & you probably already know about this - I’m posting mostly for others - bullets in XT/MR/MT connectors can be rotated 360* inside of their housings, easiest to do before plugging them together.
For the MR60, it makes soldering much less cramped if you rotate the middle pin 180* - essentially you’re soldering the outer two bullets, then flipping the connector in your jig, & then soldering the middle bullet.
Unless this is already what @Eratrace meant when he mentioned turning the contact.
Don’t have a connector with me right now, but essentially like this
(Left side of picture is example I’m mentioning - right side marked just to show rotate-ability, though sometimes rotating the outer pins 90* so you can attack them top-down depending on what you have available to hold them as you’re soldering is also nice)
Hope this helps anybody lurking that struggles w/the tight space.
*oh yeah - needle nose pliers or forceps are probably the easiest thing to twist them with, but many things will suffice.
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