Reddit mentions of Elenco Deluxe Soldering Iron [ 40W ]

>This subreddit has been flooded with posts about gamecard adapters since xyz's original design release and I want to answer some main questions that keeps popping up.
>
>Make sure you're using the latest design!
>
>Many people are still using xyz's original design which was not routed optimally, had some minor issues with pin size/spacing, and had test points that need to be insulated (i.e. with tape) for it to work. The current recommended design is from Gadorach and they are in Gerber format so you don't need to download EAGLE to produce the gerber yourself!
>
>Make sure you're using the cheapest fab!
>
>Seriously, I'm seeing so many people use oshpark, which is an expensive American fab. For a design this simple, go with one of the dozens of chinese fabs that, in my opinion, is just as good if not better. For a design this simple, even the worst fab that gets everything wrong will likely still produce a working result. Use pcbshopper to find the best price. Use the following template for your estimate: http://i.imgur.com/kxM0igD.png
>
>If you're making it just for yourself, then oshpark is fine (make sure you're using 0.8mm!). But if you buy > 3 boards, the chinese options quickly become more viable in terms of both build time and price:
>
>9-10 boards: $16.05 @ oshpark (~15 days shipping + build) vs $8.90 @ "Smart Prototyping" (~19 days shipping + build) vs $20.41 @ easyeda (~9 days shipping + build)
>
>100-102 boards: $181.90 @ oshpark vs $28.80 @ dirtypcb
>
>And we haven't discussed paneling yet... If you're making more than 100 boards, I strongly recommend paneling. Most of these chinese fabs charge the same for anything < 10cm x 10cm. Each gamecard adapter is about 2cm x 3cm. That means you can put 9 to a board easily and even more if you get creative. Lots of fabs will even do this for you for a very small fee. This means with almost minimal work you can get 100 boards for ~$10 shipped from a chinese fab.
>
>There's a lot of fabs to choose from, I think any listed from pcbshopper is fine. Just be aware that any fab has long (> 1 week) turnaround time... You're not ordering an item, you're having it manufactured for you. I have personally used dirtypcb, seeedstudio, easyeda, and pcbway and found all of them fine.
>
>When given options, leave most as the default but the important ones are you need the board thickness to be 0.8mm - 1.0mm (thinner is better but fabs usually start charging extra < 0.8mm). If given the option to tent vias for free, go for it (it'll help prevent accidental shorts with the gamecard slot). Most fabs take a zip file of the Gerbers. In Gadorach's design you just zip up all the files in the "GerberX2_V1.0" directory. Oshpark is special and doesn't accept those gerbers, so you have to figure out a way yourself.
>
>Make sure you're using the cheapest gamecard slot!
>
>On on aliexpress or ebay and search "micro sd socket" and most of the first page results will be the right one. You'll likely be buying lots of 10 or more because buying 1 costs as much as 10. I personally prefer ebay and bought this which is $0.78 USD shipped for a pack of 10. The shipping time for these items are usually 12-24 days, but that lines up with the PCB fab time usually if you're ordering boards also. If you go for faster shipping (7-14 days), it'll cost you ~$3.
>
>Soldering is easy
>
>Seriously. When people say that soldering is hard, they're talking about fine pitched parts or having lots of components. That's not the case here, you're literally soldering 12 giant pads. Look on youtube for a tutorial. It'll take you like 2 hours top to learn. They teach soldering at some middle schools, so if kids can do it, so can you. Since you're likely gonna be buying 10 boards and 10 sockets, you have plenty of room to screw up and mess around as well. Soldering iron is cheap too. If you're in the US and use Amazon, search "soldering iron" and sort by cheapest with free prime shipping. I see one for $15. Don't worry about fancy features, tip sizes, wattage, etc. Try to buy one that comes with one small coil of solder (again don't worry about the type, percent lead, etc). You don't need flux for pads and components this large but if you want, you should get rosin core solder which has flux built in. This project is dead simple.
>
>If you have choice anxiety though, here's some options I found with a quick search:
>
>40W iron $15.99: https://www.amazon.com/Elenco-Deluxe-Soldering-Iron-40W/dp/B001COH1LE/
>
>60/40 rosin core solder $2.60: https://www.amazon.com/MG-Chemicals-Leaded-Solder-Diameter/dp/B005T8N3YI/
>
>I'm sure you can do better though. I bought my first iron for $8.
>
>You should try to build it yourself!
>
>All this to say if you never soldered anything before, you can still do this! $8.90 + $0.78 + $15.99 + $2.60 ~= $30 (if you live in USA but I'm sure you can find similar prices for your country as well) and you can build about 10 boards on your own. Think about it, you can pay someone $20 to buy the supplies, assemble it, and ship it to you... or you can spend $30 and have a fun weekend project. That is the maker spirit that we're trying to cultivate. If you build some and want to sell/share your extras with the community, make a comment in this post, but please do not make a new post and clutter the subreddit.
>
>Please don't make any new posts about adapters... unless you created something new
>
>If you have any questions about adapters, building them, buying them, etc, post them here or in the bi-weekly questions thread. We also don't permit selling stuff on this subreddit, but I recently added the exception of ".. unless you have something novel" which means if you made a new design or improved design (like adding a plastic shell or a eject mechanism) you can make a new post. Otherwise, if you want to buy/sell existing designs, please only do so under this post. We were pretty lax in enforcing the rules previously. Remember, as always if you buy/sell stuff be careful and don't be too trusting.
>
>tl;dr
>
> Please no more posts about microSD adapters (any kind) unless it's something new or improved.
> Buying/selling is against our rules but an exception will be made for this thread.
> * But I would prefer to see you build them yourself! It's fun and interesting.

Improper voltage at an outlet is usually just a digital multimeter measuring induced voltage from a broken hot or neutral wire. What that means is that as soon as you plug a load into the circuit like a lamp that voltage goes to zero. In effect it's like one of the wires has a very high resistance and when you put a load onto the circuit, one end of that wire is at 0 volts and the other end is at 120. Because of the high resistance there isn't really much heat dissipated so it just looks like an 80 volt outlet that doesn't work at all regardless of what you plug in. if there is a significant voltage drop across some point in the circuit while you are drawing a non trivial amount of current that means that you have a very dangerous wiring problem. The heat dissipated at the fault is just the voltage across it multiplied by the current going through it. So if "too much current" is dropping the voltage across the circuit you'll quickly get "too much fire".

Just to run some numbers let's say that the voltage at an outlet is 80 volts with an amp of current running through it. That means that the fault location is now dissipating 40V * 1A = 40W all at one tiny point which makes it a lot like leaving one of these running inside your wall. In fact this is basically what happens with aluminum wiring that is installed incorrectly which makes it a fire risk, over time the expansion and contraction from heating and cooling just increase the resistance of the connection enough to where it starts dissipating enough heat to light on fire.

So yeah with that in mind I think it's safe to say that low voltage to the power adapter isn't causing the issue here.