Soldering iron.

photekq · 13 Apr 2015, 21:04

Anyone have a suggestion for a cheap but not shit de-soldering station?

Muirium · 13 Apr 2015, 23:49

And anyone got a recommendation for a great soldering station with a nice selection of interchangeable tips? My brother's got nothing, and he likes to have as few but high quality tools as possible.

jou · 14 Apr 2015, 00:47

Muirium wrote: ↑And anyone got a recommendation for a great soldering station with a nice selection of interchangeable tips? My brother's got nothing, and he likes to have as few but high quality tools as possible.

I've got myself a Ersa i-CON Pico which was a very nice upgrade from the cheap Lidl soldering station i had which was impossible to get replacement tips for. The base is vey small and the iron is light, has a very flexible cable and heats up very quickly. Make sure to get additional tip fastener for each tip, otherwise it's a pain to change them.

Muirium · 14 Apr 2015, 06:32

Thanks. Looks pretty decent. Precision is definitely what we're looking for.

bhtooefr · 14 Apr 2015, 14:01

I personally run an Aoyue 937+, which is a Hakko 936 clone, but with digital temperature control instead of analog.

Parak · 14 Apr 2015, 15:29

Muirium wrote: ↑And anyone got a recommendation for a great soldering station with a nice selection of interchangeable tips? My brother's got nothing, and he likes to have as few but high quality tools as possible.

It's very difficult to beat JBC in the tool selection and performance, but they are very expensive both in station and tip costs. Rarely available on the used market.

Pace and Metcal are great too, but are usually somewhat harder to get in the EU. For Pace in particular, you'd want to go for something with the TD-100 handpiece in Intelliheat flavor.

All three brands have something around 80+ tip geometries for their main soldering irons, and it's hard to go wrong with either one - I have all three, and they're all great stations in their own way.

andrewjoy · 14 Apr 2015, 16:18

Its all about the tips , even if you get a cheap clone get one that can take genuine tips.

Zylkan · 17 Mar 2018, 09:23

Sorry for getting back to this but I'm now finally about to take the step to buy a soldering station (it's only been 3 years) and I wanted to get some opinions on a 10 pcs tip set.

The station is a 936 clone from hobbyking.com (EU warehouse), and this would be the tip set:
https://hobbyking.com/en_us/soldering-i ... 0-pcs.html

So although the set is very cheap, I'm still wondering if it's really necessary for the type of usage. The purpose here is to learn, practice a bit by de-soldering some switches from an old 1800 pcb and then solder them back into the pcb. If I seem capable I will then move on to change the switches on my main keyboard. Wouldn't the included tip be able to do this well enough?!

Cheers,
Z

Sangdrax · 18 Mar 2018, 05:11

I've got a 936 Radioshack rebrand and I've soldered a lot of stuff for different projects (I do much more high voltage and audio than keyboards) and the large angled tip is the one you'll use 99% of the time. Nice wide area, good angle and transfers heat the most efficiently. Then you want a tiny needle one for SMD and one that holds an xacto blade for a hot knife.

But this https://www.ebay.com/itm/1x-900M-T-3C-S ... 4d46c3d0e2 is the main deal. And the cheap chinese tips work just as well as the official ones.

Zylkan · 18 Mar 2018, 12:49

Sangdrax wrote: ↑I've got a 936 Radioshack rebrand and I've soldered a lot of stuff for different projects (I do much more high voltage and audio than keyboards) and the large angled tip is the one you'll use 99% of the time. Nice wide area, good angle and transfers heat the most efficiently. Then you want a tiny needle one for SMD and one that holds an xacto blade for a hot knife.

But this https://www.ebay.com/itm/1x-900M-T-3C-S ... 4d46c3d0e2 is the main deal. And the cheap chinese tips work just as well as the official ones.

Thanks a lot for your valuable feedback!

Would you say then that the tip set I linked would be a good investment? Or should I go with just the one you mentioned?
Would you include switch soldering in those 99% of times?

Also, sorry for the ignorance but what does SMD stands for?

Thank you again!

Blaise170 · 20 Mar 2018, 18:37

SMD means surface-mount-diode. The leads are not through-hole where the components poke out through the other side of the PCB, but they are instead soldered on the same side as the component.

I'm not sure if Aoyue is readily available in Portugal, but I have an Aoyue 701A++ which is a good quality Hakko clone and it has made desoldering 3-4 times faster than using an iron+pump alone.

andrewjoy · 11 Apr 2018, 11:40

I have changed my recomendation from the cheap 936 clones to the FX-951 clones

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FX-951-fx951 ... 0505.m3226

They use the tips with the heating element in the tip so they have way better thermal capacity and get hot MUCH quicker and have more accurate temp.

If you want you can also get a TS100 https://www.banggood.com/MINI-TS100-Dig ... ehouse=USA

zool · 11 Apr 2018, 12:33

do check out the TS-100 for an iron. Not a bad iron by accounts, lowish cost, open source hw and sw, and you(ie no name brand rip offs necessary). Just add laptop power supply, and while your at it a chisel tip.

Simple pumps work very well, and even more if as people have said; add some 60/40.

a desolder station is a dream to use in comparison to hand pump, more so the more you have to desolder.