Fallingwater
Flashlight Enthusiast
I've used a supercheap 30 watt soldering iron for years, and I finally decided it was high time to upgrade.
So I hit eBay, had a look at the various stations available, and got myself a fancy digitally controlled one for €56 (about US$82).
It arrived today
I like it a lot
I particularly love the manual. Not because it's complete, but because it tells me that "The operation is a little bit easy and the heating time is somewhat short too". Gotta love the chinese, at least they don't use grand statements like "the easiest, quickest soldering station ever!" like us western people do.
Oh, and if you touch the hot iron you "will suffer seriously bum".
Actually, let me post the whole thing for your amusement:
I've been using the station for most of the day, and I'm very happy with it.
The iron is pretty quick to heat up and goes up to 450°C (842°F).
I'm particularly impressed at how easy it is to solder to batteries now. I used to have to hold the cheapie iron on the negative terminal forever to heat the surface enough for the solder to stick, with the constant worry of overheating the cells (which increased exponentially when soldering to excitable LiIon ones). Now all I have to do is to kick it up to maximum temperature and two seconds are all it takes to get the solder to stick (after I've scratched up the surface with some sandpaper, of course).
I was thinking of building myself a capacitive discharge welder for putting together battery packs, but I might not actually need it now. I doubt any significant damage can be done to batteries with such quick solder joints.
Only thing I'm not sure about it is I don't know where to find replacement tips. They are a bit different than what I'm used to. There's a sleeve that needs to be unscrewed and removed, and then you slide the tip off the heating element.
I'd appreciate it if you guys could help me with number, a code, a model, anything I can search for.
Here's a pic:
In conclusion: if you solder, you owe it to yourself to get a proper soldering station. They're relatively cheap and really do make a great difference.
If the one you buy is analog (with a dial) make sure it's temperature controlled, not just with a power setting. A good sign is if it has a dial with temperatures marked on its steps.
Digital stations are always controlled.
So I hit eBay, had a look at the various stations available, and got myself a fancy digitally controlled one for €56 (about US$82).
It arrived today
I like it a lot
I particularly love the manual. Not because it's complete, but because it tells me that "The operation is a little bit easy and the heating time is somewhat short too". Gotta love the chinese, at least they don't use grand statements like "the easiest, quickest soldering station ever!" like us western people do.
Oh, and if you touch the hot iron you "will suffer seriously bum".
Actually, let me post the whole thing for your amusement:
I've been using the station for most of the day, and I'm very happy with it.
The iron is pretty quick to heat up and goes up to 450°C (842°F).
I'm particularly impressed at how easy it is to solder to batteries now. I used to have to hold the cheapie iron on the negative terminal forever to heat the surface enough for the solder to stick, with the constant worry of overheating the cells (which increased exponentially when soldering to excitable LiIon ones). Now all I have to do is to kick it up to maximum temperature and two seconds are all it takes to get the solder to stick (after I've scratched up the surface with some sandpaper, of course).
I was thinking of building myself a capacitive discharge welder for putting together battery packs, but I might not actually need it now. I doubt any significant damage can be done to batteries with such quick solder joints.
Only thing I'm not sure about it is I don't know where to find replacement tips. They are a bit different than what I'm used to. There's a sleeve that needs to be unscrewed and removed, and then you slide the tip off the heating element.
I'd appreciate it if you guys could help me with number, a code, a model, anything I can search for.
Here's a pic:
In conclusion: if you solder, you owe it to yourself to get a proper soldering station. They're relatively cheap and really do make a great difference.
If the one you buy is analog (with a dial) make sure it's temperature controlled, not just with a power setting. A good sign is if it has a dial with temperatures marked on its steps.
Digital stations are always controlled.
