Hopefully this doesn’t annoy anyone too much, since I saw another soldering thread here tonight as well. I was just blown away when I got and used my new tool tonight for the first time.
I can actually solder a wire to an MCPCB without needing to leave the iron on the MCPCB for 3 minutes; it’s mind-blowing.
As a test, I took a roll of fairly thick solder (0.050” 60/40) and just held it up to a cold iron. Turned on the iron and timed how long until the solder began to melt onto the tip.
Aoyue (set at 370deg, default out of the box): 26sec
POS iron (set at 460deg, maximum): 3min, 14sec!
It is a quality QUALITY tool and you can tell the second you take it out of the box. Power cord is heavy 18ga, but really flexible and high quality casing. Power unit is just super beefy and heavy, they didn’t skimp on the copper and magnets. Iron is a joy to hold, really comfortable and well balanced.
I went with the Aoyue (lol, I work for a Japanese company and don’t even know how the pronounce that, I’ll have to ask…) since it seemed to be regarded on about the same level as Weller and Hakko, but the price was a bit more affordable. In fact I checked camelcamelcamel and the $72 price is the lowest ever offered on Amazon, by a fair margin. What sealed the deal was the 15% coupon that Amazon was offering (that was a new one to me, never seen coupons on Amazon before) and - at least in my area - same day shipping. I clicked “buy” during my lunch break and the thing was on my doorstep when I got home at 6:30pm. I know this reads like a freaking advertisement, but it’s not - I’m just pretty darn pleased at the moment.
I got a Weller WSD81 station, is a german brand
not much high tech inside, good old big transformer and some electronics
heats up from 20°C to 380°s in 18 seconds
the best thing on that station is you need no tools to switch the tips in 10 seconds
just unscrew the plastic ring
plop out the old tip,
insert new tim
screw it back in palce
Oh yes there is no such thing as too good and too much soldering equipment. I had one of the cheap Yihuas for some time and while it was way better than a stick my Aoyue 2930 is just amazing. I’m convinced that so much of people’s fears and failures related to soldering is due to them using poor quality unregulated stick irons.
Even better, keep that soldering equipment in good shape. For many years I thought my soldering equipment was useless. One of them was an old cheapie 30W soldering iron like the chinese sell for $3 these days, and the other was a 100W Weller. Both of them were worthless to solder with. Then I learned how to clean and tighten the tips, and wow, these things were awesome!
the modern tips have a layer of nickel around the copper core, where no solder should stick its plated with chromium
the thickness of the plating makes the durability of the tip
not too far back in the 80s and 90s people used pure copper tips and they sucked bad
i am using that solder in 1st pic, and i think it’s not so bad at all, at least with my usage it does its job
but i am ordering an 60W 12V soldering, and 5V usb solder(i think, what, is there anything today that cant power by the usb port?), according to some reviews, the 5V one really does its job well
maybe next year i will order A TS100, it looks like from future, with a lot of technology in it, and can work with 19V adapter
The TS100 does seem very interesting, it uses the integrated heater normally seen only on very expensive irons (and the Aoyue 2930) so there is no loose thermal path from the heater to tip. Much better thermal transfer that way.
Besides the of course questionable accuracy of the power rating on cheap devices like these the heater and tip construction make a big difference. Most of these use the same Hakko style tips where the heater sleeves inside the tip. On the genuine Hakko this works fine because the tolerance between the two is quite tight so heat transfer is good, the cheaper ones it’s all over the place. I’ve had good luck with shimming the tip with a piece of sheet copper to make it a tighter fit. Little piece of soda can would probably work good. I’ve seen people try thermal compounds as well but there is a risk you cement the tip on. Graphite powder it probably the best choice if you want to try.
