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Soldering Iron Detonation

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GimpyJoe

Wed Jul 05 2006, 12:49AM

Registered Member #316 Joined: Mon Mar 13 2006, 01:30PM
Location: Marietta, GA
Posts: 212

My friend bought a "cold heat" iron at a discount store and he says it *does* melt solder, but the power is very very low and it doesn't cool down fast like it says it does.

Marko

Wed Jul 05 2006, 12:51AM

Registered Member #89 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
Location: Zadar, Croatia
Posts: 3145

Some of such 'portable' irons use butane and they work pretty well.
At least there's little to burn out in them..

Cesiumsponge

Wed Jul 05 2006, 01:25AM

Registered Member #397 Joined: Wed Apr 19 2006, 12:56AM
Location: Western Washington
Posts: 125

Might I add the Hakko brand into the mix if you are hovering around the Weller price range. I own the 936 ESD temp control/stabilized station for at least several years now and I love it. 60W, 10-15 second warmup time and it's good to solder. I do have an old cheap Weller but I haven't used anything in the same price range as the Hakko (~$80-100 depending on where you look) so I can't make a comparison.

I'm still burning the original tips (normal duty use) and its taken plenty of abuse by me.

Chris Russell

Wed Jul 05 2006, 01:27AM

... not Russel!
Registered Member #1 Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052

Someone who meant well bought me one of those cold-heat irons last Christmas. I can verify that they don't work well at all. They function by running a lot of current through some sort of carbon tip. You touch it to something conductive, and it completes the circuit, and the tip gets just hot enough to melt solder, maybe. Of course, this sucks, because you have to run current through whatever you're soldering. It's also unconfortable to use, and the tip doesn't cut it for fine work.

I have an old Weller that I've been using for years, as well as some cheap no-brand thing from Taiwan. Both work pretty well, but I would definitely go for something better if I found myself soldering more frequently.

Never had one explode on me. Wow. That would scare the holy bejesus out of me.

Michael W.

Wed Jul 05 2006, 04:32AM

Registered Member #50 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:07AM
Location: Vernon, B.C, Canada
Posts: 324

It did scare me, I bought a new one this morning and had fears of it blowing up again. Honestly it almost looked like this when in went off....(Thanks Penguin7471 for the example)

Sulaiman

Wed Jul 05 2006, 05:56AM

Registered Member #162 Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3141

A word of warning about Weller soldering irons.

Mine died (gracefuly) about three weeks ago,
I'd only been using it for about 27 years and it just died.

Amazingly, no trouble getting spare parts!

Conundrum

Wed Jul 05 2006, 07:02AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062

I once had a Weller 100W iron glow bright red (!!!!) before it got rapidly switched off.

-A

Penguin7471

Wed Jul 05 2006, 07:29AM

Registered Member #71 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:23AM
Location:
Posts: 63

Ouch, talk about an unwelcome hello from mr. soldering iron.. I've heard a similar story about a desoldering iron, apparently the graphite brushes in the suck-up-motor wore off (as they do) and fell onto the mains circuit board underneath. One day these tiny graphite grains were enough in numbers to bridge across the active and neutral soldered terminals.

The manufacturer could at least have sprayed something onto the PCB... maybe laquer or similar.

Steve Conner

Wed Jul 05 2006, 09:12AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

I like the Weller soldering irons. I've got a Weller 50 watt handle connected to a ghetto-ish home-made temperature controller, that reads the temperature sensor in the iron tip and uses a triac to control the power. It's worked fine for about 10 years now, and only needed something like two replacement tips. I guess it helps that I made the controller so it turns the temperature down to 150ÂºC if you don't use the iron for 15 minutes.

I also got one of those cheap butane soldering irons and it works surprisingly well

It actually seems to have a thermostat that cuts down the gas flow once the tip gets to the right temperature.

I've never had an iron explode on me, except for once when I accidentally tried to solder something that was connected to the mains. It blew about 1/4" off the end of the tip.

robert

Wed Jul 05 2006, 05:41PM

Registered Member #188 Joined: Thu Feb 16 2006, 05:18PM
Location:
Posts: 67

Since my darn expensive station (cost way too much) burned up some years ago i have a Ersa TIP260 iron.
Its actually a line-powered one with surprisingly well working built-in regulation.
Works just as well as the station did and cost much less.Just the temp isnt adjustable but fixed at about 380Â°.
Heats up in about 20-30sec and has enough power for soldering relatively heavy wires if a large tip is used.
The small pencil tips (about 1mm) last about a year here, thats around 1kg of solder (60/38/2 Sn/Pb/Cu).

Yes, im more or less thinking about a station centered around a ersa iron (replacement for a ersa station) but its going on slowly, since the line-powered one works well.

I have a cheapass replacement iron for a even cheaper trash station because i need something for testing of the egulation algorithms on that doesnt really cost much.If powered from a 12-14,4v battery it heats up to a useable temperature and can be used for soldering stuff outside the lab.

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