Practical Soldering Project Kit

This kit has you solder resistors in place, only to realize you need other resistors to continue, helping you practice de-soldering and replacing. I was at first frusterated by this, as I've done many other kits that were straight forward. But I quickly realized this is a true learning kit. It teaches you to solder, then de-solder what you put on. It works well when fully assembled and the instructions are full of useful information, much better than any other kit i've done (I've done alot of kits). This is truly a good beginner kit, full of good information. 10 out of 10 would recommend to any noobie looking for basic soldering experience. Large solder pads, teaches you to desolder, it has it all! After all my hard work, the siren works and the lights flash. Great buy for anybody looking to learn soldering or for a fun project to work on.

I bought this for my 7yr-old so he could learn to solder and end up with something that would interest him. The device has two LEDs that flash alternately, and a siren that oscillates. It comes with everything you need but a soldering iron. The thing I loved about this was the practice pads on the back, and the very large, widely spaced pads throughout the board. With the practice pads, your kid can easily get the hang of what it means to solder and how it should go before they have to feel like they're starting on the project. Then, once they start on the project, there is plenty of space for them to build their confidence. The kit was put together well, easy to use and understand. For older kids with longer attention spans, the kit comes with a booklet with quite a bit of information, and a quiz. If you have a kid that is maybe 10-14, this would be for them. The one thing that bothered me about the kit was the lack of an on-off switch- so to stop the noise/lights you have to pull the battery, which annoyed my son as well. We'll add one on of course, but I think it would be the perfect addition to make the kit complete.

It's a well designed kit for learning and practicing soldering. The instructions are well written and informative. And it's a pretty good price for what you get. I recommend buying some extra desoldering wick because the small amount the kit came with was easy to lose.

Everything you need is included and the projects are fun. Quality components and instructions are easy to follow. Definitely recommend if you want to get into soldering.

This was purchased to get in some soldering practice on an inexpensive board after purchasing a new soldering station--also through Amazon, of course! It allowed me to develop a touch with my new equipment before working on a PCB that I actually cared about how the results turned out. I found this to be a really good experience with only one exception. From the picture provided on the product page, you can see from the silkscreen on the PCB that the LEDs have a flat side. The instructions said to mound them so that the flat side of the LED components matched up to the silkscreen. Even with a magnifying glass, I could not find a flat side on the actual components. I ended up simply guessing. I was verifying all of my soldering joints as I went along using the continuity check on my DVM, so I knew that things were going well--generally speaking. When I got done, I needed to use the troubleshooting section of the instructions only to find that one of my LEDs was installed backwards because I had guessed wrong. Other then that, things worked as expected. This was a nice little kit. I've subsequently purchased a few other ones from Elenco to continue developing my touch with my new equipment.

I bought this kit for my teenage son as his first soldering exercise. It is a great kit to get started with as it's very easy to assemble and has a good variety of different parts to try out. I especially liked the practice area with the extra holes and pads to practice on before actually working with the real components, giving him some confidence before moving on. Happily it worked on the first try! The packaging is minimal -- if you're giving this as a gift, you may want to take that into consideration. It's basically just a letter-sized zipper bag with a small booklet and loose parts. Speaking of booklet -- it came with a 5 or 6 page long 8.5x11 pamphlet giving detailed instructions, diagrams, and theory of operation. While the theory section could have been written better, overall it was very easy for him to follow and had some nice quiz sections on resistor values, etc to get him started. If you've never soldered before and want to give it a try, this is a great introduction.

There are a wide number of "learn to solder" projects which give you a pile of parts and a board and leave you to it. This is not one of those projects. This is a well-designed learning tool throughout. The manual goes over techniques for soldering, for fixing mistakes, safety techniques, and the basic theory of how the circuit works. It includes practice soldering different kinds of components, desoldering, bridging connection points, and more. It walks you through step by step showing you what to do at each point and starts out with a number of areas on the board not relevant to the circuit that give you a playground to practice your technique. This is an incredible value and the best practice kit I've found by far.

It goes through a great deal of detail on what to do when soldering and walks through common connections and issues that you might run in to, and even includes a section just for practicing. For the learning experience, I give it 4 stars. On the other hand, the material quality was pretty poor overall, and the solder points had a tendency to melt off the board. This was made apparent during the teaching part, so I was expecting it and more careful while attaching the components, but I still managed to torch one of the pads for one of the capacitors (I would have turned my iron down, but I don't have a variable temp soldering iron; if I stick with this much longer, though, I have my eyes on an iron that would let me do just that). For material quality, I give it 2 stars. That issue notwithstanding, I probably would have wound up with a working siren, but I missed the two "jumpers" (just wires going through the board). By the time I noticed them, I'd already pulled the potentiator, timing chip, and speaker off to salvage for other projects down the road, so I didn't have a chance to try again. So, if you're considering this, for what you get for the price, I'd say it's very much worth it. If you have a variable temperature iron, set it about as low as you can while still hot enough to melt the solder, and be careful not to spend too much time on a part or over-work it. If you have your own lead-based solder, that will make this easier as it has a lower melting point and is generally easier to work with than lead-free solder.

This is a great kit to learn to solder with. The book gives you the basic knowledge about the components, and then teaches you to put that knowledge to work with completing the project. This kit is great for beginners, and comes with everything you need minus the soldering iron and a 9V battery. I had a lot of fun building this project, and I can't begin to describe the feeling of accomplishment that comes with completing a project like this and having it actually work.

This is great wee project to start off. My 8 year old enjoyed it.

Nice fun

Aunque el instructivo está en inglés, no mucho pierde en seguirlo. En el folleto de instrucciones indican tips y habilidades para soldar y desoldar.

Just great kit for beginners. Kids were very happy to spend a whole day soldering this kit. Its has a led lights and siren’s sound while completed, and you should see the happy faces of them. Be sure you got a solder iron and the battery, thats not included in the kit. Kit helped me to hook up the kids on electronics and we already built radio and alarm clock and they’re looking for more projects.