Officially lost

[dkevin]

I'm not sure that this question belongs in this section of the forum, but... I am looking to purchase a soldering station. I have read a bit of info on temperature controlled units, the repairability of some stations, short iron cords, tips with temperature sensors,etc,etc.
I have always made do with pencils and a Weller 100 that I found in a pawnshop for $9. I would like to make the next step but, as always, money is a factor. Considering the cost of replacement tips, reliability and initial cost (not to mention, ease of use) what are your recommendations?
Thanks for your time!
dkevin

[Chuck H]

I've been using an inexpensive Radio Shack "soldering station" (adjustable, presets, lcd display, etc.) for about six years with no trouble. It would be new, so it'll have a warranty. And it's only about $80.00 US. Mine is a little slow to adjust, but that's the only complaint I have.

Chuck

[Enzo]

Ask yourself what you are planning to do with the solder station, and more importantly, how does the unit you are now using fall short of your needs? If what you are using is doing the job, then stick with it. If you are doing a lot of work on pc boards, then controlled heat and limited heater power are factors. if you are doing point to point hand wiring in amp chassis, then most anything will work. A Weller gun even.

And that brings up another consideration. If your small iron does most everything you want, but now and then it has a hard time soldering something large, then instead of looking for your all of the time iron to do all the jobs, consider the light iron does most of it and get something like a Weller gun for those occasional heavy jobs. Heavy like soldering mighty heater transformer cables. Soldering direct onto a chassis is tough for anything. Best to use alternatives for that. (Solder lugs under screws for example)

I have been using a Weller WTCP solder station for about 30 years now, and am quite happy with it. There might be a "better" unit out there, but it serves my needs quite well. It is not adjustable. I have never missed having it adjustable. The tips do come in different temperatures, but I use the 700 degree tips all the time. I have an 800 degree tip somewhere , and have never used it. Of course ther are many other perfectly good stations. And as Chuck says, you don;t have to spend a ton.

I get good tip life, I feel. the tips are easily changed in seconds, and cost $4-5 each.

[Bill Moore]

Not being a professional tech, I have gotten by for years with the pencil irons for small work. I do have a dual heat gun I use at work.
After I soldered all the components to the turret board of my latest project,(AB763 Twin), I broke down and bought an inexpensive Weller. It's a WLC100, and is temp adjustable and has a coil to hold the iron, and of course the sponge. I think Tubes and More sells them for about $55. I neglected to buy extra tips, but haven't needed one yet.

[tedmich]

The ZD Electronic Tools solder station is available for ~$15 (MPJA.com) and decent quality, variable from 5-50w, with OK tips, which are a weak point of most cheap irons IME.

[Axtman]

I have found Radio Shack soldering irons to be junk. A while ago I bought an inexpensive Weller soldering station, nothing fancy. Wow! What a difference! I am sold on Weller! I still have the Rat Shack soldering iron in case someone asks to borrow it or something.

BTW, what do you guys recommend for desoldering?

[Chuck H]

Just heat up the old solder and brush it away with your fingers

Seriously, I really have no complaints about my Rat Shack soldering station. What about yours was "junk"? You didn't say.

For desodering I use fluxed braid and those goofy sucker bulbs.

Chuck

[Enzo]

If an iron makes hot, it SHOULD work, but the tip is the key. if the tip has a crappy surface, it won;t wet with solder well, and it won;t transfer heat to the connection well.

One time not too long ago, my heater died, and my backup had been used on another station at some point. Always good to act on those "I really ought to get a spare" impulses. I ran down to Radio Shack and bought a cheap iron, only needed to do a few joints. The iron got hot enough but the tip was awful. I got the job done, but I had to work at it.

I use a desoldering station on the bench. When I was doing field service I preferred the metal hand pumps like this:


If you like the rubber bulb

fine, but I never felt they work as well, and the metal tool is only a buck and a half more.

There are also plastic hand pumps

But having tried them, they cost more, don;t work any better, and I find them easier to break. And the metal ones easily come completely apart for cleaning.

Some guys swear by braid. I absolutely HATE braid.

It may suck solder well enough in most cases, but you have to apply enough heat to not only melt the joint but also get the braid hot, and a pump of some sort pulls solder out of the holes better than the simple capillary action of the braid. In my opinion. And in some cases where a heavy leaded thing like a bridge rectifier is soldered to some large copper lands on circuit boards, it can be darn hard to clear that with braid.

Images are from MCM.

[Bill Moore]

I found out the hard way not to use air pressure. I loaned my ford 104 pin breakout box to another shop, and when I got it back there were some bent pins in the connector, when I tried to straighten them they broke. Since the connector is just the connector end of a pcm, I decided to replace it, and what easier way than to heat each pin and blow away the solder with shop air. It really worked great until I looked at the back side of the pcb. I think I spent an hour cleaning the solder splattered everywhere.

[tedmich]

haven't tried desolder braid in awhile, but am considering it as my desolder pump ( a decent plastic unit with 2 o-ring seals and a teflon tip) tends to suck the pads right off my PV pcbs (Doh!)

[Chuck H]

Most of what I build and work on is eyelets and aluminum chassis with smaller mechanical grounds than the big welded blobs you see on old steel chassis. So I do fine with the bulb and braid. There have been times when a more vigorous suck would have come in handy (insert joke here) but I've never been troubled enough to get a mechanical sucker. If I worked on alot of PCB's I would have a desoldering station.

Chuck

Edit: +1 about the crappy tip on the Rat Shack irons. I re-shape them with a much longer taper and a slight curve. The curve is super handy in alot of circumstances. Then I polish and re-tin them.

[defaced]

I'm cheap, so all I use are the $7 Rat Shack 40 watt irons, and I've been pretty brutal to mine (leaving it on all night and such). The only problem I've had is that the thread where the tip goes gets destroyed inside the iron. It's like the edges of the threads get warn away and then it's worthless at holding a tip. Aside from that, for 7 bucks, even if it only works for a year I'm cool with that. And the tips suck unless they're tinned. It took me a few months to figure that out.

[Enzo]

Pads don't come up because of suction, they come up because heat has loosened the glue that holds the copper to the circuit board.

[Alex R]

I have an old Hakko temp controlled unit I bought secondhand, and the tips last forever. But I don't use the temp control for general repair work, just leave it set to 400C which melts lead-free solder ok. Used to use a Weller magnastat, but they do seem to go through the tips quite quick.

Hand solder pumps work fine for me though a vacuum desoldering unit might speed things up a bit where there are numerous joints to clean. It's just a speed issue though, the hand pumps work fine and as the hand pumps are so cheap and the vacuum units so damn expensive...

...but get a hand pump with interchangeable tips, and buy a few, as they wear out fairly quickly.

Also I have a big crude plumber's iron (it's the iron that's crude not the plumber. Necessarily.) - for chassis work. It will melt solder on a chassis floor easy. You need at least 100 watts for that. That one has plain copper bits and eats them up but I don't use it often enough to care. It was really cheap.