Choosing a soldering station

[999999999]

Re: Choosing a soldering station

^ Doesn't happen to mine, I still think your tip is not clean. At over 350C which is well above the melting point of the most commonly used solders, you may be burning away the flux rather quickly.

You might just be trying to wet with far too much solder, wetting doesn't require a huge amount on a fine conical tip... it would pretty well defeat the purpose of having a fine tip if there were a lot of solder on it.

[timelessbeing]

Re: Choosing a soldering station

I actually have a chisel tip, but the effect is the same. I'll grab a photo for you next time.

[timelessbeing]

Re: Choosing a soldering station

Applying solder to an iron and then taking a focused macro shot was trickier than I thought! So here you can see what I mean. The brown crust is flux from the solder I had just applied, so it can't be helped.

I find that having some solder on the tip makes transferring heat more efficient. It increases contact area with the part being soldered, as well as providing a heat "reservoir" for parts that dissipate more heat into the air. I'll confess there's a little bit too much in the first pic, but when you're de-soldering parts you need a good size blob to envelope all the leads. When space is tight, you need that solder at the tip end as much as possible.

Anyway, I've said too much about it already. Just a little niggle.

[999999999]

Re: Choosing a soldering station

While I don't tin my tip with that much solder, what it is doing looks fine to me.

[Rangefinder]

Re: Choosing a soldering station

The solder goes on the component not the tip. The photos are just what I would expect. Just enough solder on the iron to transfer heat.. In regards to tips for the Weller (my standard by for years) a company named PLATO provides tips for several manufactures, including Weller. Most of my tips are Plato. For those of you in OZ , I'd bump that temp up to 427deg C. (800F). Working too close to the melting point is still too cold for proper flow. I use a long reach tip w/ a 1/32 chisel tip to get into the tight spots. Tried conicles , don't like them.