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
Yes and yes.

I've got a Weller unit along with a few different tips for various soldering jobs.

I've used it for basic electrical and electronics repairs, electronic and pc projects and even some work stuff on occasion.

Before I had this iron I had a £5 unit with a bent tip and if that didn't do the job took them into the place I worked at.
 
I bought a Metcal SP200 a good few years ago 2nd hand. Cost me £80. I was struggling with a cheap iron while building a 4 line, 6m X 3m OO gauge railway. If anyone knows how much wiring a modern digital layout needs of that size, a cheap iron when you spend hours upside down underneath the boards is soul destroying. The Metcal was a revelation and soldering became a joy and no longer a curse.

Also being able to change the tips is great for doing fine work or chunky wiring for RC car motors and batteries.
 
Feek said:
Inspired by a comment from someone on Twitter who I assumed would have a soldering iron but when questioned said "I never learned to solder".

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

Secondary question (no poll), if so, are you confident using it?
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As the owner of a VW Golf the ability to have both access and be able to use a soldering iron is a must. Unless you are happy to slowly loose the ability to unlock all the doors :D
 
Chaos said:
Yeah have a look here -

Vid
Vid

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.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this post - I asked for recommendations in another thread a few weeks back. Very helpful!
 
I have a cheap one that was fine for basic wiring jobs (fixing toys etc.) but I am not confident in my ability to do circuit board stuff with it.

I purchased a set of high quality capacitors to replace the duff ones that are most likely causing the issues with an old Samsung monitor my daughter uses and I am struggling to desolder the offending ones. I don't think the tip is getting up to temp but it may just be my technique.
 
I bought one to replace an inverter transformer in a Samsung monitor.

I don't really know what I'm doing with it or what an inverter transformer is but the monitor works now. :)
 
Greebo said:
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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Never heard of that make I confess but rework stations are lovely bits of kit and its great to see other manufacturers versions. Do you use the hot-air and iron-fume extraction features at all? Good move with grabbing spare heating cartridges and elements! They can be costly!
 
Kainz said:
Never heard of that make I confess but rework stations are lovely bits of kit and its great to see other manufacturers versions. Do you use the hot-air and iron-fume extraction features at all? Good move with grabbing spare heating cartridges and elements! They can be costly!
Click to expand...

To be fair there seem to be thousands of chinese copies of the same thing. I doubt i use it to a fraction of what it can do. I have used the hot air quite a bit though. That works great.
 
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