3 ms·

I love the $1400+ solder station I use at work. If I could have one at home, I totally would. Solder tweezers and a heated solder vacuum are very useful. But I

I love the $1400+ solder station I use at work. If I could have one at home, I totally would. Solder tweezers and a heated solder vacuum are very useful. But I am pretty handy with the $130 Hakko I got from adafruit back when I got one for home use. I soldered for a long time with a cheapy $40 Weller I got off of amazon, although I won't go back to it any time soon. Getting a brass sponge and tip tinner really made that thing viable as a daily driver though. I think that's the difference he was trying to illustrate: if you can't do a basic through-hole board with a 40W pen-style iron from the hardware store, it ain't the tool.

sulam 4y ago
What brand is your station at work?
- petsfed 4y ago
  It's a Weller. I used to work at a place that had the Weller WXR3003N. $3360 of pure joy. The one I work with now is a Weller WX2021N, which Newark has for $1400. The tool quality on either is phenomenal, but definitely not necessary for learning on. Some control over temperature, peak temperature hot enough to melt lead-free solder are really all you need to learn with. I don't want to be a neo-luddite, but you end up learning a lot of tricks with a sub-par iron that I rarely have to use with the high-end tool, but I'm glad I know. For instance, its rare with the high-end tools that I have to glob a bunch of solder onto a joint during rework, but I had to do that all the time with the cheap tool. But now, if I just can't get a joint hot enough to melt, I know that that is an option.