6 ms·

I can't emphasize the following enough: > A real soldering station > Solder Get a good, name brand soldering station. Yes it will cost a few hundred dollars,

• fhood 9y ago
  I don't think you even need to spend a few hundred. ~100 will pretty much do the trick.
• silasb 9y ago
  I've looked around for a good soldering station and the best thing that I could find for the price/performance is the TS100. All the other budget (sub $100) didn't have a direct heating element. In total, I probably spent about $100 to get a stand and other things needed for soldering.
  • jeff_vader 9y ago
    I'd second the TS100. It's ~$40 (given you can find a power supply for free, laptop bricks work fine. I'm using mini photo printer power supply which I found on the street + $1 plug + $3 worth of heat resistant silicone cable). Warms up in seconds, open source and customizable firmware, takes very little space (kind of important to me since I don't have a dedicated shed/garage for the hobby). What's not to love about it for a beginner?
    • stigi 9y ago
      Honest question: Why does a soldering iron need a firmware? Isn't it just enough to set a temperature? What other features are there?
      • gh02t 9y ago
        Apart from reading the buttons that control the device and writing the display, a digital iron needs firmware to control the feedback loop that maintains the temperature. Digital irons generally have PID based temperature regulation, unlike the crappy analog ones that have open loop systems (some analog irons have temperature regulation, e.g. Weller's old magnetic tips, but the crappy $5 irons do not). This requires a controller to supervise, but also means the iron heats up much faster and maintains that temperature while soldering. Other features like a temperature graph or adjusting calibration and control parameters are handy additions when you have a nice display like in the TS100. Realistically though, people aren't really writing their own TS100 firmware with the exception of a few tinkerers. What it comes with is good enough.
    • kc3 9y ago
      Can you say where you can find a TS100 for ~$40? The cheapest I'm seeing is $50-55. Also, are there different versions you need to worry about or are they all the same? I assume you only want a "MINI TS100" vs. some of the other knock off brands.
  • pmorici 9y ago
    why bother with that when you can get a name brand adjustable temp iron for ~$100?
    • Viker 9y ago
      I would actualy argue that the "MINI" TS100 is a name brand. Build Quality is Great. Preformance is on par with Hakko and Weller. Also they have other great products. The MINI Nano DSO203 is a great 4 Channel Digital Oscilloscope for around 100 USD... Also the Mini ES 121 is a piece of art screw driver :) So yehh... I say it is a name brand ! And the Brand is "Mini"
      • jacquesm 9y ago
        I could not recommend the DSO203 in good conscience, it has almost no isolation of the input channels which makes it downright dangerous. It's nice if you only do audio or low voltage stuff but the first time you're going to point your probe at something a bit more beefy and you will let the magic smoke out (good case) or worse.
    • schwarze_pest 9y ago
      Because there are none. Please show me a name brand direct heating element soldering station for $100. I would like to buy one.
  • cerebellum42 9y ago
    I use a Weller W61C (80-90€), which is a soldering iron (not station) that regulates its temparature using magnetic tips. Bit of an oddball, but it works fine even for soldering most SMD stuff, and it's just delightfully simple. Just plug it in and start soldering. Takes up basically no space too, since it's just a soldering iron with no station. For really fiddly SMD items I have a cheap hot air rework station, but I don't need it very often - mostly when I have to desolder something SMD or solder on an IC with a thermal pad on the bottom.
• archgoon 9y ago
  > name brand soldering station What's a good name brand for soldering irons?
  • coryrc 9y ago
    Weller. Though I have a Aoyue hot air station and it is great.
  • NegativeLatency 9y ago
    Hakko
  • Kelbit 9y ago
    Get either a Hakko FX888D or a Weller WES51. I personally prefer the Hakko, but both are excellent stations that cost under $150 which will serve you for years if you take care of them. A note - soldering stations usually come with a cheap conical tip as a starter tip. Pay an extra $20 or so to buy two chisel tips: a tiny one for fine work, and a big one for larger work. The flat surface allows you to apply more heat to the joint. Take care of your tips (ie: keep them tinned, don't leave the iron on too hot, and don't scrub too hard with the brass sponge) and the tips should last a few years without trouble.
    • Gibbon1 9y ago
      The WES51 as a solid soldering iron. You can get ones with a display readout but it's less useful than you might think. Most of the time you just set the temp and then switch tips if you need more or less heat transfer. Need to solder something large or stubborn? Using a phat chisel tip is better than upping the temp. Too hot and the rosin quickly oxidizes and turns to varnish, which prevents the solder from wetting. Also tips, get a hooked tip, about 80% of the time it'll do the job.
    • mikro2nd 9y ago
      A thing to say in Weller's favour: They stock parts forever. My Weller station is somthing like 35 years old, now, still works perfectly. But someone damaged the sleeve that holds the tips in place. No problem, for a modest cost I could still buy a replacement, even though that particular part no longer fits any contemporary model of iron Weller sells. Kudos to them!
• crtlaltdel 9y ago
  buy a weller and use appropriately sized solder for the application (very thin solder sucks really bad if you are doing something like throughhole or larger parts...you will have to apply the heat longer to apply enough solder)
  • mindslight 9y ago
    IMHO thin solder is also annoying on larger joints due to less of a flux core.
• ninjakeyboard 9y ago
  +1 I was using thicker solder for a while and it was a mess. Getting thinner 60/40 flux code made a HUGE difference in my ability to build boards. It doesn't have to be super thin but thinner is 100% better than thicker.
• cr0sh 9y ago
  > The cheap-o $15 soldering irons all produce horrible results and will shatter your confidence... I would make the opposite argument that if you can get great results from a cheap-o soldering iron, your confidence and ability will soar thereafter. Recall that, back in the really early days, soldering irons were large affairs, consisting of a large block of copper heated via a gasoline or kerosene torch, with a large wood handle and a steel shaft: https://www.stevenjohnson.com/soldering/pics/old-reliable.jpg https://www.stevenjohnson.com/soldering/pics/old-reliable.jp... Electrical ones weren't much better: https://www.stevenjohnson.com/soldering/pics/ge-1911.jpg https://www.stevenjohnson.com/soldering/pics/ge-1911.jpg Now granted, connections were mostly "free-air" and not PCB based or similar. Also, some of those irons were meant for soldering sheet metal, not really electronics or electrical work - but that's what people had at the time... When I learned to solder thru-hole electronics, I learned with what could be called a "cheap-o" soldering iron; something like this (maybe not as nice looking): https://www.circuitspecialists.com/content/image/104526/600/sh-813a-220v-0.jpg https://www.circuitspecialists.com/content/image/104526/600/... I still have it, and still use it occasionally. It takes "forever" to heat up (about 10-15 minutes), and the tip looks like hell. But for thru-hole construction, it works great. Once you know how to use it, you can solder like a champ. Would I use it for SMT rework? No. Basically it's virtually worthless for anything with less than 0.1" pitch, unless you're removing parts and just need to dump a lot of heat in a small area. The key to successful soldering is knowing how to control and place the heat where you need it, and flowing the solder into the joint properly. Most make the mistake of not tinning their iron or the part leads, then trying to flow the solder using the tip of the iron, where all it does is stick the iron tip. Instead, you have to heat the component's lead(s), and flow the solder using the heat on the lead(s). Tinning both the iron and the leads helps with this as well. Flux can also help, but if you use a decent flux-core solder (preferably 63/37 ratio tin-lead), flux should rarely be needed. A paste flux is useful though for cleaning the tip of the iron, especially when shutting down for the day. It's kinda like arc welding. Sure, MIG can be easy to learn. But if you really want to understand, start with rod (stick) first. Yeah, you'll stick the rod continuously, cussing a storm up at first. But after a while, you'll develop the knack of keeping that weld pool just right and moving the rod while feeding it in, without sticking. Once you've done that, MIG is nothing...
  • 9y ago
• taneq 9y ago
  I have a $99 100w Duratech one and it's perfectly adequate, no different from the $400+ Weller ones I've used in the past. If you're just doing a bit of soldering as a hobby, though, get leaded solder. It works so much better than the modern unleaded stuff. Just don't breathe the smoke.
  • lsc 9y ago
    >If you're just doing a bit of soldering as a hobby, though, get leaded solder. It works so much better than the modern unleaded stuff. Just don't breathe the smoke. That is personally not the tradeoff I'd make. Lead is a special kind of poison in that it makes you stupid before it kills you: This is especially true of children, but I don't want any of it on my adult self, either. Note, you can also buy lead-free 'low temperature' solder, which has a lot of the same properties of lead solder, though it's more expensive.
    • cerebellum42 9y ago
      As far as I know, many lead free solders produce more toxic smoke than leaded solder because they contain different types of flux. When soldering the leaded stuff, the lead in it doesn't get evaporated anyways. The smoke produced during soldering is mostly evaporated flux. "don't breathe the smoke" is just generally good advice, and it definitely doesn't become less applicable if you use lead free solder.
      • lsc 9y ago
        I need citation on this idea that flux is just as toxic as lead. Being a technician, I read the MSDS: https://www.mgchemicals.com/downloads/msds/01%20English%20Can-USA%20SDS/sds-4900-4917.pdf https://www.mgchemicals.com/downloads/msds/01%20English%20Ca... vs: https://www.mgchemicals.com/downloads/msds/01%20English%20Can-USA%20SDS/sds-4860-4867.pdf https://www.mgchemicals.com/downloads/msds/01%20English%20Ca... I mean, I ain't saying you should lick either one... and yeah, I don't know how much if any lead is released into the air during normal operation, but lead is pretty seriously toxic to humans, and avoiding touching the lead as I'm using it sounds kinda difficult. The flux? yeah, that isn't any good for you either, but I don't think it's in the same category as lead when it comes to toxicity.
• Doxin 9y ago
  or get a hakko clone from aliexpress. half the price and just as good in my experience.