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11 August 2026
I have bought and received a Pinecil V2 with an adjustable AC-DC power supply. I'm glad I know how to tin a tip now, as these tips are much more expensive (but surprisingly not as much as I anticipated). I'll definitely keep this tip much better than the last one. The iron itself is very quick to heat up. You can see the temperature rising in real time, takes about 10 seconds-ish. The Pinecil V2 is much smaller than my last iron, like an actual pencil. The heating element is directly built into the tip, and it has made such a difference! Solder melts immediately at 320C and it recovers heat quickly when you touch metal components prior to solder. Literally night-and-day between this Pinecil V2 and my crappy rando-Amazon brand iron. It's tricky when starting to solder because I was often questioning whether it was a tool issue or skill issue when the solder was difficult to work with, even when a novice like me innevitably cranked the heat to "overcome" the skill issue (DO NOT do this, by the way. It will wreck your soldering tip, your solder, and melt your PCB all at once).
Now, I have mounted some of the resistors for the dividers, but then I ran out of 2k Ohm resistors, so I will have to order more and wait yet again. I have most components sitting in through-holes of the protoboard. Once everything is here, I will solder each piece. I'll likely solder sections in this order:
- Resistors (x9)
- 3k Ohm resistor -- arduino GND (x3)
- chip GND -- arduino GND
- mid-dividers -- chip MOSI, CLK, CS (x3)
- chip MISO -- arduino pin13
- arduino 3.3V -- chip VCC
- Tie all dividers to GND line
- header (power) pins -- wires (x2)
- header (data) pins -- wires (x4)
- through-connect each divider (x6)
- tie chip VCCs together
- chip slot -- wires (x8)
I will also have to continuity check everything using continuity test and the ohms readings (for the dividers).
I went to my local thrift store and got several ethernet cables (Cat5, Cat6) and stripped them down for wire. This has also been a huge improvement in my PCB work as now I can precisely route power where I need it. It looks like spaghetti, but that's another skill to acquire, I suppose.
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