Poll: Poll: Do you have a soldering iron?

Do you own, or have access to a soldering iron at home?

  • Yes

    Votes: 382 78.3%

  • No

    Votes: 106 21.7%
  • Total voters
    488
Mr Joshua said:
Own more than one and I'm very confident in their use. They're mainly used to assemble etched metal model railway kits, quite fiddly and cab get very hot very quickly as you're trying to hold two bits together :D.
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thought of getting a pair of kevlar gloves?

dont affect dexterity soo much and super heat resisitant. can get in most catering shops etc
 
x-st said:
Is learning to solder something you can do via the medium of youtube? Am curious as have always wondered what the best way to start is for someone who's never even touched a soldering iron (and would probably very seldom be called to!)
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Definitely - I picked up basic experience with it from trial and error and a little bit of teaching at school but more recently went to youtube to pickup some tips on advanced techniques when dealing with small IC packages, etc.
 
Tefal said:
thought of getting a pair of kevlar gloves?

dont affect dexterity soo much and super heat resisitant. can get in most catering shops etc
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But where's the fun in that! ;)

Ideally a resistance soldering unit would be a dream purchase. Carbon tip which generates the heat by an electrical current passing through it and the metal to be soldered, instantly cools when you turn off the juice so parts don't have to be held with anything other than the pressure of the carbon probe.

 
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x-st said:
Is learning to solder something you can do via the medium of youtube? Am curious as have always wondered what the best way to start is for someone who's never even touched a soldering iron (and would probably very seldom be called to!)
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Yeah have a look here -


You can buy some cheap electronics kits on ebay from china for a few quid to practice.

Good soldering stations -

Under £100

Hakko FX 888D

Under £200

Hakko FX951

There are only 2 official distributers for Hakko in the Uk Grosvenor and Dancap electronics, all the others on ebay will probably be fake ones.

Other good stations are weller ( well made but expenive in the uk), Metcal (Can sometimes find cheap STSS models on ebay) Jovy iSolder 40, Ersa.
 
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I've got a basic cheapy one, and I can do the very basics of soldering but I wish I was better. I may get one of those kits where you put it all together and solder components just as a fun way of practising actually.
 
Yes, a cheap soldering station i've had for years.
Started fixing my own joysticks/pads back in the amiga days and did an electronics course in the 90's.
Most recently i built a couple of DNA mods for vaping
 
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Yeah, got a couple of soldering irons. One is probably close to 40 years old. The other is a mid to late 80's adjustable temp one.

I'd consider myself to be competent. Don't have to use it often enough to be good at it.
 
I actually purchased one last year (and soon replaced wit with a better one) as I wanted to learn. I bought a bunch of kits from Maplin and made a radio, electronic dice and some other random bits. Was a good learning exercise and I feel more confident now. the original intention was that I wanted to build my own compressor pedal but the side effect is being able to possibly repair broken stuff. De-soldering joints I haven't quite grasped properly but learning to work the solder correctly was helped with a temperature variable iron as the standard plug-and-go one was too hot by default

- GP
 
s-l1600.jpg
When i needed a new soldering iron I went big and got one of these. Dead handy

https://www.imageupload.co.uk/images/2017/04/24/s-l1600.jpg
 
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