Gikfun Electronic Hourglass led Diy Kits Welding Practice Board Blue Ray EK1886

Title covers it, great practice for the prize. It's a little smaller than I thought but then again, considering what you're doing, don't expect a giant device either. 10/10 product, looks great when finished. Love that you have to flip it for the lights to go back the other way.

Fun learning project! I put my pins on backwards but was able to make things work with a bit of wire haha!!

This is a great soldering kit for beginners. It has a lot of points to solder, leading to good repetition to practice on, but nothing too crazy either. The instructions are excellent and very clear with good photos of what to do. Just a good evening project to practice solder on. Two things that are two things I'd like to point out. One point is is the the lack of power supply. They give you an idea of what you need, but from there you need to figure out what to get. So I need to figure out what to get to make this work (or to find out if my work is good.) The other is R15 on the board. While the instructions make it clear this is a 3.3 kiloohm (only the first one is like a Megaohm IIRC), the legend ink seems to suggest this is supposed to be a 2.2 kiloohm. Resistor when it should be 3.3. Had to spend a few minutes figuring out what went wrong. Overall, I recommend this for the ease and hours you can spend on it, but make sure to figure out what to use for the power supply.

It actually works really well. It can be set to how quickly it moves and you could even wire it to a battery. You have to like soldering with all those LEDs though

I purchased this kit for my 10 yr old son, and we spent a few hours together over a weekend putting it all together. This was a follow up project to some simpler soldering projects that had 5-10 components total, so bumping up to 60+ components was a lot of fun. We had no problem following the instructions. There's not a lot of detail, but each step was clear enough to understand what was required. They kind of leave you on your own for the power side, but as other reviewers mentioned, you can use AA, AAA or other sources to power your project. We used two CR2032 in series and bough a small enclosure to hold them separate from the project boards. This was a great project for honing soldering skills, as there are lots of leads to connect, and there are a couple places where precision and placement really matter. Getting the IC's into the board was tricky, but I think that's pretty normal. We loved this project and would highly recommend it! All our components worked (thankfully).

Bought a dozen for an electronics club (10-12 years old). Assembly has a few gotchas with orientation of the parts but if you read (look carefully at) the supplied printed instructions (I failed to do that) you should do fine. Definite pros: printed instruction; really cute and daft; cheap! Cons: Power supply not supplied. We used some USB break-out boards and a couple of short pieces of solid core insulated wire. If you don't have the USB break-out, you might just cut the end of an unused or broken (device-end) USB cable, find the 0V and 5V wires and solder them in place. Really a lot of fun. Club members had very few problems that weren't the good kind.

I used this to help teach my nephew how to solder (he did a smaller kit first with help then this one mostly on his own) the issue is the instructions are bad. Nothing really show where components go but a photo (most kits will have a drawing of the board with component numbers and part description next to it. This one did not even show how the LED's go in, a first timer might have thought they were non polar and just stuck them all in random ways. Also note it takes 5V but does not include anything (no cable, socket....) you are on your own to have a wire to hook up and find a 5V supply. If this had better instructions and had come with at least a USB cable to hook it to power I would have given it 5 stars.

Kit is good practice, does what it is supposed to do. Instructions are easy to follow.

I bought this to introduce my 12 yo to soldering. I cut up an extra usb cable to use as the power input. Also, I ended up soldering the CPU/chips myself as they can be temperature sensitive. Otherwise, he was able to solder all the LED/resistors. The connectors were a bit tricky as he had accidentally put solder into the holes so I ended up rescueing it for him with desoldering wick/pump. Most importantly, the instruction sheet was clear and pointed out obvious fail points. I think they should have added wires/connectors for power. Other than that, it's pretty and good practice. As for the negative reviews about not being too useful; NONE of the home soldering projects are reasonably useful. This is a cheap solder practice kit with some pretty lights at the end. Perfect for beginners, hobbyists, and learners. No moving parts means less things to break. Recommended

This was my second introduction to soldering so I'm very much still a rookie. The instructions are pretty clear. The boards are well labeled as to where the components should go and I had no issues with that. One problem is one of the markings is mislabeled as 2.2k or 2.3k ohms while the resistors are 3.2k ohms. It's intended to be 3.2k but that still threw me off. In the end I had an extra resistor as well as 3 extra diodes just in case you mess something up. My final project ended up being a failure but that's clearly all my fault! Some of the LED's don't light up and they seem to fall in a weird pattern but that's no fault of the creators.

This is the best practice board that I have found by far. Everything came that should have, everything worked. There are tons of solder points here, it has got the most practice for your buck. It does not some with a power cord, but honestly learning how to cut up an old USB cable to make it work was part of what made this kit fun. If you are looking for something to practice/learn to solder, buy this.

Bought this as a beginner project kit, I'd never soldered before and didn't really have any past experience or knowledge. The instructions are useless besides trying to squint and follow pictures. The kit doesn't include a battery pack or wires to actually turn on your creation once you're done. I spent 5 hours putting this thing together, I ended up doing a ton of reading online while building this thing because nothing is explained to you in the kit. All in all it was satisfying to turn on my creation after pulling apart an old clipper set to steal it's wiring and battery pack, but it was a very stressful introduction to soldering. For beginners, a project like this would be great, if it had detailed instructions, and for experienced solderers, this is a very basic and pointless project. I'd recommend spending a little bit more money for a better kit. A radio project kit I ordered came in today with full instructions and a booklet that explains the who, what, when, where & why's of soldering. That would have been much better to start with.

This was one of the more interesting kits I've put together. It operates well and is a good project for practicing densely packed through hole soldering. I only wish it had come with a schematic or guide, but even without it was fairly easy to figure out.