Just out of curiosity—I don’t know much about soldering so…
Anyway, what do you guys think about this??? Seems like a good deal.
Basically it’s a $8.99 soldering iron with a lot of things that may not be useful to you thrown in.
I have used these cheap irons with no trouble, but the tips dont last long.
You can get good mileage from it by using a copper wire soldering iron tip cleaner,
keeping your tip tinned, and not leaving it turned on when not in use.
I would suggest to get a cheap iron by itself, and some good solder and a copper cleaner seperately. And some solder removing wick if you desire.
I bought one of these from Hobby King.
It works really well but the shipping is a little high.
If you put it in your cart and wait they will usually offer a better deal.
I have one very similar to that and I did have a problem with it. I will post a picture of it below. Long story short, it turns out that it is a problem well known to that design regardless of price. Of course it happens more to the lower end irons than the higher end. It is the nut that holds the nipple assembly in place. The material that nut is made of has to have a very high heat resistance and bad batches of them cause that nut to either melt or get very brittle.
I was actually shipped a second one for free and so far no problems.
If you have a way to check the temperature it would be a \good idea to check it. One of my multimeters has a thermocoupler attachment rated up to 1200F and for what the iron cost it is pretty close. + or - 40 degreesF sometimes less.
Other than that, the other are spot on. Keep the tips tinned and don’t leave it on for long periods when you are not using it.
You will see in the picture below the part I am talking about. If it happens again I am just going to order a Hakko replacement for the part. Several of their models will fit the thread pattern.
What about the SEEED?? Has anyone tried that?? It looks very interesting.
I just picked up an Aoyue 469 this week, can’t wait to try it out this weekend. I saw a lot of people recommending the Hobby King one, but this looks like a nice unit and is on Amazon (I use Prime)
Here is the one I have been looking at. It is the analog version but at that price I can't pass it up. I have a Weller here that cost 10 dollars more and you can't adjust anything on it. I like it when I need heat fast. Turn it on and 30 seconds later it is ready to use.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VINMRO/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=AKJ57Q9VZBBO8