What wattage soldering iron?

markj

Hi ordered a Bill m kit for my Blues junior. What wattage soldering iron should I use when working on the delicate circuit board. I have a 25 and a 40 watt iron, but these will be too much for working on the board. Any advice would be welcome.

ecc83

The tip size/form and temperature are more important than the actual wattage.

If the BJ uses leadfree solder you will struggle unless you have modern iron with temperarture control.

Actually you will struggle with Pbfree anyway!

Give pics or at least the models of the irons.

Dave.

ICBM

I use a 30W iron with a fine pointed tip for all but the most tiny PCB work and it's fine.

Danny1969

Assuming the iron is decent and gets hot enough (don't buy a cheap one) you still need a good technique to quickly melt the joint and remove the component .....  spend too long and your pull the PCB track off the board. Making sure the iron is properly clean and tinned will help a lot. Some of the tracks on Fender PCB's are terrible and easily damaged if your not quick enough

jpfamps

It's a myth that too powerful an iron is more likely to damage a PCB; in fact an under powered iron is far more likely to cause damage as it takes longer to heat the joint.

De-soldering, especially lead-free solder, is much harder than soldering, and PCBs can easily be damaged (especially those with plated through holes).

When removing components from a PCB, unless there is a VERY good reason why you need to preserve the component, if possible I clip the component out and remove the individual leads; remember the components are cheap and damaging the PCB is to be avoided.

To desolder from a modern PCB, I resolder the joint with leaded solder, and then remove the solder with desoldering braid.

Headphones

That last bit's the real key to clean removal - an extra bit of "real solder" makes all the difference in extraction.  Personally I prefer a solder sucker, I find it a bit more controllable and the name is so much cooler to say!

Still don't get the modern solder RoHS point, it was a minimal argument at best and has introduced guaranteed obsolescence at the 7 year +/- 2 years point, that virtually guarantees no vintage kit from the twenty-tens will function (not to mention cars, TVs, medical kit, etc)!

Google "tin whiskers" if you're curious.