The BLF GT70 "Giggle Monster" is here! 7,500lumens, 1,500m throw! Group buy Closed!

And now you know why I’m T-18 that is my go to solder tips always, Hakko solder tips are the only ones I ever use, the best IMO…

I had that same problem when using the china tips, ever since switching to the hakko tips I can solder mcpcb’s mounted to a light with good thermal paste without an issue as long as the substrate has enough thermal resistance. The clemance mcpcb’s are hard to solder no matter what for example.

I used to think my station was the issue until I also switched to hakko tips, now even my cheap $15 soldering iron works great and I find myself using it a fair amount, I keep a large tip on 1 of them and a small on the other.

Same here TA, this has to be one of the first things I discovered after joining, I have a Yihua 936 and started with some sort of knock off tips and then Richard RMM and I were chatting and I explained some issues I was having so actually it was RMM that clued me offhandedly by telling me he never has the problems I was referring to and I asked what tips he preferred and it’s the T18 series and so my thinking is if it’s good for RMM then it will be excellent for me and it’s stayed that way.
I found that the Shape B became my do everything and anything tip, and just as a thought this tip is probably the best for anyone new to soldering, I think you can hardly fail with this tip, worth looking at even if your an old hand at soldering but haven’t tried these.
Shape B and examples

I can’t get any coupons to work, tried different browsers, copy/paste and manually entering codes. :frowning:

Very strange, even typing them in manually did not work?

It just takes the price off, you have to look at the total to see the difference.

About the Hakko tips, where would be a good place to buy one single genuine tip at a decent price?

If you use amazon prime I think they have decent prices on them there. Otherwise ebay is where I got mine.

Sorry, my mistake. On my device the Determine order button wasn’t onscreen until I scrolled. There wasn’t any Enter button near the coupon field so I hit Enter and it moved to a page with only the checkout option.

No problem, I figured it was something like this.

The T-18 S3P is the one you want for the big stuff…NOT CHEAP….

https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-T18S3P-Fx-888-Station-5-2mm/dp/B00762AHTE/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1537309289&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=Hakko+T-18+S3

I got the D24 with the Hakko station and I liked it alot, still do… then I tried the S3,D32 and D16, but then I found this kit… with the S3 D32 D24….Amazon.com Pretty good deal and you get the 2 Conical tips for like free…

Yes, since others ordered successfully I thought I must be doing something wrong but I just couldn’t see what it was. :person_facepalming:

That is a nice deal. I think I’ll get this kit.

Can anyone comment on the diameter of their heating element? I want to make sure my element is not undersized. I got about 3.86mm on mine and 4.21mm on the tip ID. That’s a 0.35mm gap.

I made a video showing the gap.

Heating element Diameter is 3.86mm x 21.73mm long and the Barrel/Nut is 44.58

Okay, the heater element diameters seem like a perfect match. So if the Hakko tip has a nice snug fit, it will probably work fine on my iron.

If you want to see another reason why these cheap tips can’t transfer heat, check out this crap. :open_mouth:

Any idea of NW conversion ship dates?

Hmmm, I’ll look into it, but I’ve got this (Soldering Station 2005 - Magnum Products) together with Magnum points and I always thought it was a quality product. Is it not?

To be honest I have never heard of that brand so I can’t say one way or the other.

There are naturally other brands that have high quality irons and tips as well, the reason we talk about the hakko tips is that almost all the china knock off soldering stations are based on the hakko setup and thus can use the hakko tips.

I only use OEM tips with my Hakko 888D. They’re a lot more expensive, but they’re definitely worth it. I do the same with my Weller WESD51.

I don’t know if it’s been mentioned yet but I was just messaging with a fella at Lumintop about the delay and some other confusion over the GT70 conversion kits, they are so great at Lumintop and great English to boot, and through this conversation I was told that the BLF GT70 is now available in NW, BLF GT70
I was also told that the conversion kit won’t actually be ready to ship until Sept. 25th, so if you’ve paid for the kit and noticed that all you’ve got is your PayPal receipt this is the reason why, I was told they are behind and will send notices via Leo with receipts by that date and start shipping.
So I went to look and confirm the GT70 NW is there and sure enough there she is, so here goes another $220 and hopefully no more glitches, and this will now make a ridiculous total of 6 GT’s and only one GT Mini, I’m trying to cut back ?
I’m sure not holding my breath that a GT70 in NW will ship this week or even the next as it seems Lumintop likes to put things up for sale that aren’t always quit ready for shipping.

This is most likely already old news since I seem to always be the last person to know of such things but I thought just in case I’d mention it again, … ha ha