Thursday 19 February 2009

Fat fingers=bad solder

So it has been a while since I have updated my progress on the glove. I'll sum it up in two points. 1)I now have all the components except for a hinge for the screen and the finger buttons. 2) I have broken the keypad due to my fat-fingered soldering attempts.

The keypad was so fiddly that the rather basic soldering iron I have wasn't accurate enough. Soon enough I had soldered the two contacts of the button together and then only had a penknife to try and scrape it off again. In short, 2 days of this process left the keypad knackered. This leaves me 2 problems. Firstly that I don't have another phone and I really liked the layout of this phone (it had crossheaded screws holding it all together and the clamshell design meant that I could have a separate mounted screen). Secondly I will prolly just do the same thing to the next phone I get so I need an alternative to soldering on the wires.

After a brief poke around the interwebs, I have found a number of things that might help. Ideally I want a conductive glue that I can dab on the wire and then hold in place on the keypad contact. Given that the wire will then have a big dollop of glue from a glue gun on it, I'm not worried about structural integrity, rather just a clean join.

Ideas on a postcard please.

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