Elenco Practical Soldering Kit

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.

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.

A lot of people have bought these for kids but it's great for adults too. I've been getting into electronics as a new wintertime hobby and I bought this just to practice soldering. The kit comes with detailed instructions that are easy to follow. The parts are very well labeled. The kit appears to be targeted to the classroom environment but I just did this in my garage. It took me a couple of hours to assemble and that included me taking lots of time to read and reread instructions. An experienced person could have probably done it in 30 minutes, but then again, why would an experience person bother? Unfortunately I could not get the siren working (I might have burned up the 555 I/C timer by applying too much heat). I did however get the alternating LED flash working. I also bought a slightly different Elenco soldering practice kit for additional learning. Practice makes perfect. I'm far from perfect but this kit has put me on the right path. For the price it's great practice. I'd rather screw this up than a real project with more expensive components.

The kit an accompanying instruction booklet proved to be a meaningful lesson. I went through mine carefully in two evenings. The project itself can be completed much more quickly, but it's purpose is best served by taking time to become familiar with the resistor color codes, try out the solder mask, practice solder wicking, and develop good technique. A very similar kit is available that includes the soldering iron. Although I suspect that version of the kit is a great value for many students, I bought a much more expensive soldering station for myself and so I appreciate that I could buy the kit without the iron. The kit includes a variety of component types that will introduce a student to the things they will find on other kits and products they will want to build. Specifically it includes resistors, electrolytic capacitors, ceramic capacitors, diodes, transistors, an integrated circuit device, and a potentiometer as well as wire for jumpers, repairs, and leads for the speaker and battery. The low-quality potentiometer quickly failed due to moderately rough handling by my kids. The turning knob has to be torqued to get it to contact internally. I don't fault the kit for that. Providing a more rugged potentiometer or panel-mount at higher cost wouldn't add anything to the purpose of the kit. I would buy more of these for anyone I cared for that wanted to learn to solder electronics. Beyond this, I would consider a kit that teaches SMD techniques. Personally I have no interest in soldering SMD by hand, but it's an important skill for the goals that some people have. My own interests are more toward Manhattan-style construction. Each person has their own reason for wanting to learn to solder electronics, but this kit is a good start for any of them.

The manual was thorough and very well written. It was not just a "stick R1 here" type diagram. The manual explained about reading resistor color bands, capacitor polarity (or lack of) and many other aspects. Plus, there was quite a bit about soldering setup, care of equipment and safety. Unfortunately, I found the circuit board to be very heat sensitive and the inner foil and glue separated from the board. There were a few times when I lifted the solder, ​and the copper "donut" surrounding the connection came along with the soldering iron. That taught me to turn the heat down on my soldering iron. On the bright side, by doing the shunt and cracked circuit-board exercises at the start of the instructions, it helped me fix the board failures and my soldering failures. (It also warned me that the board "melted" quickly.) In the end, my siren would have worked, but in fixing a foil/glue failure, I short-circuited a resistor, so instead of "wee-ooo" I just got a timid "eep" and a burning-hot transistor. However, I will salvage the parts or something. It was about learning to solder, not having a siren. This kit was not my first soldering project, so I probably wouldn't recommend it for children or tweens as a first project as might want a siren at the end of their hard work. I found the board very touchy for soldering. In the past, I have worked on smaller "Tiny Whoop" RC quadcopter PCB boards without issues.

This is the best kit for beginners and even intermediate builders. I recommend it for even more experienced builders. There are areas on the board for different types of solder practice. You learn how to make complete solder pads; avoid bridging of solder pads, remove of excess solder by wicking and iron movement, joining pads, repair of cracked traces and adding wire connections. The kit is available with a good soldering iron & stand, diagonal cutters, and a tube of no-lead solder at extra cost. . Parts like resistors, capacitors, and diodes are packaged on a strip that identifies each by circuit designator, value, and color codes as applicable. This is extremely helpful in sorting out the little disk capacitors with tiny numbers on them. Assembly instructions have lots of pictures and guided part placement. The solder pads for components are a little larger than normal to make it easier for first timers to hit the pad. The manual is a good teaching aid for electronics and part identification. Elenco kits are terrific!

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.

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.

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.