Anyone here do micro soldering?

[Monkeyleg]

I have an 8-pin connector for a ribbon cable that I need wires soldered to. The pins are only about 30 gauge and are spaced pretty close together, with the separation about the thickness of a piece of masking tape.

Anyone here do that, or know of a place that does?

[Brad Johnson]

Is the cable currently terminated somehow (ribbon, pin, etc)? Maybe post a pic a we could give you a homebre alternative.

Brad

[RevDisk]

I have an 8-pin connector for a ribbon cable that I need wires soldered to. The pins are only about 30 gauge and are spaced pretty close together, with the separation about the thickness of a piece of masking tape.

Anyone here do that, or know of a place that does?

I've done it, you need a very fine tip on the soldering iron and one of those illuminated magnifying lens on a swing arm. Otherwise no different than normal.

PITA, obviously. Buy a replacement cable if humanly possible.

[230RN]

I hate to admit I'm a little foggy on the recollection, but I seem to recall doing some fine soldering with a piece of like maybe 14 ga solid wire wrapped around the tip of a soldering gun, using it as a fine extension of the regular tip.  This was in the days of low-melting genuine, honest-to-gawd 50-50 solder, though, like 1950 or so, maybe later.

Hope that helps --sorry about the cloudy memory.

ETA:  I think maybe I used one of those wood-burning irons with the wire wrapped around that instead of a soldering gun.  Just not sure.

Hypno-regression, anyone?

[Monkeyleg]

Brad, it's not the cable, it's the connector. I just need 14 wires soldered to it, one to each post. It's tiny.

I found a guy in Huntsville who will do it for $45.

I can't see it well enough to solder, even using an illuminated magnifier.

Here's a photo:

[Brad Johnson]

Looks like it would be doable with a 1mm spade tip, some 0.5mm solder, and one heck of a steady hand.

Brad

[lupinus]

Very fine tip and solder. As Rev said, magnification is your friend. Get thee a good position to rest/steady your hand. And remember small bits get to temperature faster than big bits.

[Monkeyleg]

I discovered my hands are not THAT steady.

I don't want to goober it up because the little circuit boards I took that from aren't cheap.  A used one, if it works, is $65, which seems like a lot for a 3/4" x 1" board with a potentiometer and a few little components.