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Does anyone use conductive adhesives?

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lcmgadgets:
I hate soldering. Hate it hate it hate it. It doesn't help that I'm terrible at it. Burned fingers, burned boards, trying to keep that damn iron away from anything flamable, surfaces that refuse to be soldered, despite doing everything right--I swear!, messy flux, okay, you get the idea. I still do it if I have to, of course but, does anyone out there have much experience with conductive adhesives? Are any of them any good--& by that I mean, could you, without trading the issues I've mentioned with bigger problems, replace some of your soldering needs with an adhesive?

BobA:
Nothing is a good as a good solder connection.  All it takes is cleanliness, flux and practice, practice, practice.   You also have to have the right equipment.   The poor results you seem to be having are probably due to too hot an iron.   A 35 to 40W iron is about all you need.  Conductive solder pastes will not give you long lasting results. 

BadMouth:
Soldering tutorials: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,129317.msg1322370.html#msg1322370
The videos I posted turned me from a lead-booger dribbler into a pad hacking machine.

MonMotha:
Good equipment really does do wonders.

Conductive adhesives are a step in the wrong direction.  About the only thing they're good for is EMC tape.  They definitely won't hold mechanically, and they're electrically pretty meh.  You might get by with it electrically for something that's very low current like a pushbutton signal, but you will not be able to move power with it.  If you really want to electrically and mechanically connect two metal pieces, you really need to solder it (or weld it, if it comes to that - totally different process, of course).

In other words, get a halfway decent soldering iron (spend $15, not $1.50), some decent solder (63/37 moderately active flux core - if you're in Europe and stuck with lead-free, get this stuff or find somebody who has the good ol' leaded stuff), and a bunch of scrap boards.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice.  It's about 90% skill and 10% having decent tools, but if you lose that 10% you're still sunk.

Monkeyvoodoo:
I was soldering for years with good and mostly bad results before I was taught how to do it properly in the navy. Most helpful tip I received was to heat the point to be soldered and apply the solder to that and not the tip of the iron. Changed the way I worked completely.


Sent from a pineapple under the sea

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