Soldering Survey

[solderotter]

Hi there. We're Solder Otter, a team of recent engineering graduates from the University of Waterloo in Canada that is redesigning the soldering iron so soldering electronics can be safer and simpler.

You may have seen the survey we posted back in 2013 when we first started working on Solder Otter. Since then, we've built prototypes, won pitch competitions, and learned so much about makers and soldering. We've received a lot of positive feedback, so we're pushing forward with the project beyond graduation.

We have another survey. It's similar to our last survey, but this one is designed to help us refine our prototype into the best soldering iron for you. We're reaching out to makers and hobbyists across several forums because we want to learn about your soldering experiences, preferences, and needs. We're also considering designing with children in mind, so if you have any input in that regard, we'd love to hear that too.

If you can spare 10 minutes to fill out our survey (link below), we would really appreciate your input. Thank you! If you have any questions or comments feel free to reply to this post or send us an email at info@solderotter.com.

Link to survey: http://goo.gl/forms/Uep9Qd0GiM

[goontron]

Re: Soldering Survey

I have yet to see anything of your prototypes. Though, seeing how people (n00bs) struggled to solder at DEF CON 22 & 23 this might be interesting. I learned to solder at the age of 11. If you can make it to where an 11 year old can solder i will be impressed!

[clearchris]

Re: Soldering Survey

Got halfway through the survey, but bailed on it because the formatting on my phone only showed the two leftmost bubbles. Your results may be skewed on mobile phones.

[solderotter]

Re: Soldering Survey

I have yet to see anything of your prototypes. Though, seeing how people (n00bs) struggled to solder at DEF CON 22 & 23 this might be interesting. I learned to solder at the age of 11. If you can make it to where an 11 year old can solder i will be impressed!

Our prototype is still in its infancy but here you can see an early version (in black) versus a simple plug n play.

Got halfway through the survey, but bailed on it because the formatting on my phone only showed the two leftmost bubbles. Your results may be skewed on mobile phones.

Thanks for the heads up. We didn't think to design for mobile (rookie mistake!)

[clearchris]

Re: Soldering Survey

Well, the last statistic I saw was that more websites are read on mobile than on laptops/desktops now. So it makes sense to make sites adapable for mobile now. I tried to do this with my website a few years ago, but the results were not perfect.

The technology, both in standards and support of said standards have improved greatly. I just changed my business website to using "responsive web design" and it took less than a day to get a satisfying result. Depending how you built your website, it could be quite easy, check out these tutorials.

http://www.creativebloq.com/rwd/resp...rials-71410085

[solderotter]

Re: Soldering Survey

Well, the last statistic I saw was that more websites are read on mobile than on laptops/desktops now. So it makes sense to make sites adapable for mobile now. I tried to do this with my website a few years ago, but the results were not perfect.

The technology, both in standards and support of said standards have improved greatly. I just changed my business website to using "responsive web design" and it took less than a day to get a satisfying result. Depending how you built your website, it could be quite easy, check out these tutorials.

http://www.creativebloq.com/rwd/resp...rials-71410085

Thanks for the link, we'll definitely look into it for future web-related content. A lot of our work is hosted on Google's platform and we had made the (unfortunate) assumption that it would have been already optimized for mobile. Sorry for that!

[solderotter]

Re: Soldering Survey

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to complete our survey and provided us with your input. We are now closing the survey. Please do feel free to continue to comment. We'll be sure to stay engaged! Or you can email us directly at info@solderotter.com. Thank you!

[ben7]

Re: Soldering Survey

Thanks for the link, we'll definitely look into it for future web-related content. A lot of our work is hosted on Google's platform and we had made the (unfortunate) assumption that it would have been already optimized for mobile. Sorry for that!

Haha, that is the reason why I call Google "Scroogle" ... they still screw things up, even though they have plenty of resources. (granted, I don't expect everything to be perfect... :P)


Well, I do like the idea of a built in fan to remove soldering fumes. For whatever reason, fumes always like to follow my head.

I don't really know what to say about the rest of it, I'm good at not burning myself with the iron.

I will say, I prefer a more pencil like (thinner) iron than a fat stick like one.

Also, another thing I'd like to see in products is better reliability, and repairability (I.E. not a "toss it and buy another one" product).

-Ben

[TechGeek]

Re: Soldering Survey

^^

[solderotter]

Re: Soldering Survey

Haha, that is the reason why I call Google "Scroogle" ... they still screw things up, even though they have plenty of resources. (granted, I don't expect everything to be perfect... :P)


Well, I do like the idea of a built in fan to remove soldering fumes. For whatever reason, fumes always like to follow my head.

I don't really know what to say about the rest of it, I'm good at not burning myself with the iron.

I will say, I prefer a more pencil like (thinner) iron than a fat stick like one.

Also, another thing I'd like to see in products is better reliability, and repairability (I.E. not a "toss it and buy another one" product).

-Ben

Thanks Ben. We appreciate your input and we'll keep it in mind!

[ben7]

Re: Soldering Survey

Thanks Ben. We appreciate your input and we'll keep it in mind!

No problem XD

As you can see, I'm a bit picky sometimes XD

Side note: just finished soldering 25 boards together the other day, I did a total of about 2500 to 3000 solder joints! XD
All by hand. :P

-Ben