Time for a new/better soldering iron

[newtothis]

OK throw me your recommendations and reviews

No slip over type tip irons please... Meh LOL

[keeney123]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

You will most like have to state what you will be soldering

[stj]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

no slipover tips means hakko T12 clones.
all other irons have slip-over / slip-in tips, just with a cover over them.

[newtothis]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

You will most like have to state what you will be soldering

A good quality iron will be able to cope with any cct soldering work

[newtothis]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

no slipover tips means hakko T12 clones.
all other irons have slip-over / slip-in tips, just with a cover over them.

Indeed.. I was considering the Hakko FX-951 but can't seem to get any over in UK

[stj]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

contact these guys.
http://www.batterfly.com/shop/index....te=common/home

they ship to the u.k. and have great prices, a friend got an 888d from them recently.
they even take paypal

[stj]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

move fast, it's on a special till the end of december!!
http://www.batterfly.com/shop/hakko-fx951

[newtothis]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

Awesome thanks!

Ordering later on

[keeney123]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

A good quality iron will be able to cope with any cct soldering work

So maybe I'm stupid, but what does the abbreviations CCT mean in this case?

[newtothis]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

So maybe I'm stupid, but what does the abbreviations CCT mean in this case?

Circuit

[keeney123]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

So you are saying any circuit that you may come across?

[stj]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

i think he means pcb

[eccerr0r]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

Speaking of these slip over knock off irons, seems that the air gap between the ceramic and the tip makes the tip have much less temperature control. What a sham! I guess I get what I paid for, alas definitely still could get it to work though it's fairly weak on ground planes.

I guess I should have suspected something when the "heater on" LED didnt turn solid on when wiping the tip off on a wet sponge... Instead the solder solidified on the tip...

Any good mods for this? Heard of people filling the gap with graphite. I tried filling the gap with some aluminum foil but wonder if it's going to really help any. It really needs to be tightly attached to the ceramic to make a difference, I'd think.

[mariushm]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

If you don't want a soldering iron with separate ceramic heating element, there are options besides fx-951.

I have on my desk a Pace HW-50 soldering stations, the removable tips have the ceramic heating element built. This model is no longer sold, but the newer models are pretty much the same and compatible tips are still made for them:

http://uk.farnell.com/webapp/wcs/sto...6474&mf=100367

The cheapest is ST 30 , same as ST 50 but with analogue temperature adjustment (at 196 uk pounds) : http://uk.farnell.com/pace/8007-0512...-uk/dp/1279325
The cheapest digital one is ST 50 at 229 uk pounds: http://uk.farnell.com/pace/8007-0514...-uk/dp/1279326 :: pace link: https://www.paceworldwide.com/produc...soldering-iron

Here's datasheet with lots of details about the stations here: https://cdn.badcaps-static.com/pdfs/...f8729678fc.pdf , see page 8. See page 20 for tip descriptions.

And like I said, it uses TD-100 tips which are compatible with my old HW-50 station, plenty of them for around 10 uk pounds each : http://uk.farnell.com/webapp/wcs/sto...7221,112899753

ST 70 is somewhere in between, but it doesn't have direct temperature adjustment, you adjust it by plugging something in the station (it's basically a stereo jack with a built-in resistor, different resistors set the station to different temperatures so you can make your own instead of buying them . It's good design for factories, where you just set the temperature and forget, less nice for hobbyists or if you need to adjust the temperature often.

[stj]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

Speaking of these slip over knock off irons, seems that the air gap between the ceramic and the tip makes the tip have much less temperature control. What a sham! I guess I get what I paid for, alas definitely still could get it to work though it's fairly weak on ground planes.

I guess I should have suspected something when the "heater on" LED didnt turn solid on when wiping the tip off on a wet sponge... Instead the solder solidified on the tip...

Any good mods for this? Heard of people filling the gap with graphite. I tried filling the gap with some aluminum foil but wonder if it's going to really help any. It really needs to be tightly attached to the ceramic to make a difference, I'd think.

my cheap shit tips that actually work very well have a sleeve inside them to give a tight fit.
you can also put silicone grease or copper-paste in one.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

I love the Weller WX2 station I got. You can get a WX1 for cheaper. The difference is the WX2 can handle two irons at once, the WX1, just one. They have a bunch of different irons that you can buy for it. I have a micro soldering iron right now. It's real nice for SMD type devices. I bought the iron off Amazon used and paid I think 60$ and it came with a stand. The tips have a mini-din type connector that just plugs into the iron. You can exchange them when they're hot without too much risk of burning yourself. It heats up extremely quick and has presets for the temps you can set. You can pick different watt irons. I think the max this can handle is a 120 Watt but it might actually be bigger. They also have an iron that's a tweezer. It's for SMD type work. You can just pick up the SMD component. Personally, I don't have any trouble using the micro iron so I won't be purchasing the tweezers anytime soon.

The hardware seems to be really well built and Weller's technical support, in my opinion, is excellent. The chips inside don't have the security bit set so you can dump the firmware if need be. They've provided technical documents explaining the protocol for the RS232 port on their preheaters. They've provided schematics to people who asked for them who didn't want to send the unit back to fix it themselves. I guess the schematics is hit or miss. Sometimes they'll give you schematics for the section you need or the the full schematics, other times they might not.

Don't quote me, but I believe their irons for the WX2 unit I have are ESD safe as well. When you're not using the iron but if you have it turned on, it's smart enough to tell that you're not using it and it'll drop the temp down to standby mode.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

Oh, I believe they also have soldering irons that have built-in hot air wands or whatever you want to call them and built-in vacuum pump for picking up ESD sensitive components. They cost a bit more money though I believe.

[momaka]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

Speaking of these slip over knock off irons, seems that the air gap between the ceramic and the tip makes the tip have much less temperature control. What a sham!

Indeed!
I dislike those irons myself quite a bit. Made a thread about it some time ago:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=46338
Even the genuine Hakko stuff doesn't compare to a cheap iron with T12/T15-type tips.

I am using a Circuit Specialists CSI-2900. This, actually:
http://www.circuitspecialists.com/le...l-display.html
It's basically the same thing as an Aoyue 2900 inside.
For $60, you just can't beat the performance. The built quality is a bit cheap, though (especially the handle for the tips). But the performance gain of the T12/T15 tips over the 900M tips is worthwhile. I've even melted big blobs of solder with it to remove entire VGA and 8-channel audio connectors from motherboards, among other things.

I guess I should have suspected something when the "heater on" LED didnt turn solid on when wiping the tip off on a wet sponge... Instead the solder solidified on the tip...

Hey, at least yours melted the solder. I got a "late Friday night" -shift KADA 852D+ station with a hacked 120V plug. What I mean by that is the station was made for the 220/230V market, but because they probably ran out of stations for the 120V market, they simply put a US / North America 120V plug on a 220/230V station. No transformer swapping or anything fancy like that.
End result: iron barely got warm enough to melt plastic... let alone solder. Oh, and jiggling random numbers all over the display. The transformer was outputting only 5.1 V DC (after being single-wave rectified) to a 7805 regulator. So that regulator was dropping out constantly - at 60 Hz, in fact. Since that 7805 supplies power to all of the logic, I guess the 5V MCU didn't quite like 4.5V DC with 60 Hz ripple.

That said, I'm surprised the damned thing worked at all.
I don't think I have posted pictures of that station before, have I?

Any good mods for this?

I'm thinking about getting a 1/2" solid copper rod and making my own tip. Even if the fit is still not good, once that 1/2" copper rod heats up to proper temperature, there will be plenty of "heat reserve" for soldering even big joints.

[newtothis]

Re: Time for a new/better soldering iron

Want to update this thread with my now current iron _

I have the Jovy iSolder40 v2

I can say by far this is the best iron I have ever owned