My soldering station just packed up and I've bought a Ryobi battery-powered replacement. I'm sold on battery power but since the purchase I've since discovered the iron runs at 460 degrees C. My first instinct was to send it back but then I realised that I rarely used my original at less than 380 and sometimes higher eg solder puddles on pot cases.
I'm fairly experienced and reasonable adept at soldering. Since the variable temp unit is twice the price I'm tempted to keep it and solder carefully. Most of my work is on guitar electrics and a lesser amount of circuit board work.
Any views, advice or comments?
Comments
What you do need though is an iron than maintains it's working temperature when soldering, as the tip temp drops it should increase the current to maintain the heat. That's why cheap irons are no good, the tips only a good temperature when it's not pressed against the work and under load.
If its break, I will get another.
I'd say it's more to do with how powerful they are.
yep - its about the ability of the iron to supply power instantly to the tip to keep it at the right temp, when the joint itself is trying to cool it down by absorbing the energy.
I think Amazon is probably ok as long as you get it from Amazon itself- that's where I got mine. But I've heard a lot of stories about non-genuine ones, so you definitely need to be very careful.
I think I set mine around 395C for standard soldering, and then whack it up full (480C IIRC) for backs of pots and stuff like that.
Ironic that so-called variable temperature irons are actually good at keeping the temperature of the tip constant…
400 easily does pot backs, solid core earthing, braided wire. I like to drop it back for doing pot or switch terminals, resistors etc.
The third button is set for dent steaming, but that's another thing.
The wattage is what enables the iron to keep hot, or rather to push heat into a thing, I think. Also I'm not convinced the budget irons are really always quite the wattage they claim, or they don't transfer that wattage as well as they might.
Instagram is Rocknrollismyescape -
FOR SALE - Catalinbread Echorec, Sonic Blue classic player strat and a Digitech bad monkey
I got most of my spare bits from either Amazon or CPC Farnell... maybe you need fancier ones, but I was able to get all I needed from pretty standard shops.