Cheap soldering irons?

[jeffro11]

I use a GOOT soldering iron as well. I bought it from deal extreme a few years ago and it's been rock solid.

[einzelherz]

i'm using a cheapo one from radio shack. I love it.

[Limewater]

I have an EDSYN 951SX. It's a really, really, REALLY good soldering station, but it's very pricey and serious overkill for what you're describing.

You mention "soldering on boards." I'm 90% sure you aren't talking about surface mount soldering. If you ARE, then you should start to look at some higher end stuff. But, seriously, for what you describe I'd just go with a $15 cheap-o. It doesn't sound like you're planning on any majorly precise work, and if you're coming off a soldering gun, anything should feel like a step up, imo.

[CRTGAMER]

I have an EDSYN 951SX. It's a really, really, REALLY good soldering station, but it's very pricey and serious overkill for what you're describing.

You mention "soldering on boards." I'm 90% sure you aren't talking about surface mount soldering. If you ARE, then you should start to look at some higher end stuff. But, seriously, for what you describe I'd just go with a $15 cheap-o. It doesn't sound like you're planning on any majorly precise work, and if you're coming off a soldering gun, anything should feel like a step up, imo.

All a personal preference. I have a 20 watt pencil and a 40 watt non-trigger gun.
Both are inexpensive and are more then adequate for my Mods.

[Limewater]

All a personal preference. I have a 20 watt pencil and a 40 watt non-trigger gun.
Both are inexpensive and are more then adequate for my Mods.

From looking at your mods, it doesn't look like you have exactly the soldering irons you need. Like the OP, you're doing fairly coarse stuff. You even mentioned earlier that you can get away with using flux-core solder. I'd eat my hat if you could use those irons to solder modern surface mount components beyond some of the larger resistors.

[CRTGAMER]

All a personal preference. I have a 20 watt pencil and a 40 watt non-trigger gun.
Both are inexpensive and are more then adequate for my Mods.

From looking at your mods, it doesn't look like you have exactly the soldering irons you need. Like the OP, you're doing fairly coarse stuff. You even mentioned earlier that you can get away with using flux-core solder. I'd eat my hat if you could use those irons to solder modern surface mount components beyond some of the larger resistors.

Better add some salt, hat is pretty hard to chew. Flux core great, especially if one knows how to solder. I know what I need, controllers as well as various mod chips and diode replacement in a PCB of a digital tach all work fine. A reason why one is a pencil iron and other a hotter wider tip.

[jeffesaurusrex]

Well there is no Home Depot in my area, and I've already tried one of the Harbor Freight irons and they don't work well. I was looking at buying one on the internet. Even if I were to go to an actual physical store I'd still want some opinions on what to get. I've never even bought an iron and like I said I've been using an ancient soldering gun forever.

2nd and 3rd link has online order option. Cheaper to visit local hardware store. Don't know why you didn't like the Harbor Freight version. A Pencil Iron doesn't have much inside that could fail. Just plug in, wait for heat up, tin the tip with rosin core solder and ready to go.

It seemed to me like it didn't get hot enough. It took forever to heat the parts enough to melt solder over them. I was repairing a gauge cluster on a car, the battery inside had busted. I couldn't get the prongs to heat up enough to melt solder on. I ended up half assing it and melting the solder with the iron, which took a while to get it to stick but it worked forever until I got rid of the car. Of course it wasn't a new one, I had only borrowed it so it may have been a bad one or something so I don't know.

Lots of good replies by the way. Thanks guys.

[jeffesaurusrex]

I have an EDSYN 951SX. It's a really, really, REALLY good soldering station, but it's very pricey and serious overkill for what you're describing.

You mention "soldering on boards." I'm 90% sure you aren't talking about surface mount soldering. If you ARE, then you should start to look at some higher end stuff. But, seriously, for what you describe I'd just go with a $15 cheap-o. It doesn't sound like you're planning on any majorly precise work, and if you're coming off a soldering gun, anything should feel like a step up, imo.

When I say soldering on boards I mean like replacing a power switch on a DS (something I am planning on doing soon) or replacing other components. I haven't done it before but I am going to have to do it soon because I want to fix that and the connector in my SNES.

[Limewater]

I'd eat my hat if you could use those irons to solder modern surface mount components beyond some of the larger resistors.

Better add some salt, hat is pretty hard to chew. Flux core great, especially if one knows how to solder. I know what I need, controllers as well as various mod chips and diode replacement in a PCD of a digital tach all work fine.

I'm not saying you don't know what you need. I'm saying that you're doing pretty coarse stuff, and can get away with stuff like flux-core solder. The stuff you're mentioning, like mod chips aren't fine work. They're pretty coarse. People hand-solder stuff a lot smaller than that, and I couldn't imagine doing it with a soldering gun or flux-core solder.

As an example:

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSea ... nt_id=5042

Each side of this package has 36 pins, spread over 22 millimeters.


To the OP: Your last message posted while I was writing this. How big were these prongs you were trying to solder onto? If they were very large at all, that was likely the main problem, rather than the iron.

Also, for what you just described, I think you'd be fine with any pencil-style iron. I'd personally go with a $15 cheapo, but I'm a cheapskate.

[Hobie-wan]

It seemed to me like it didn't get hot enough. It took forever to heat the parts enough to melt solder over them. I was repairing a gauge cluster on a car, the battery inside had busted. I couldn't get the prongs to heat up enough to melt solder on. I ended up half assing it and melting the solder with the iron, which took a while to get it to stick but it worked forever until I got rid of the car. Of course it wasn't a new one, I had only borrowed it so it may have been a bad one or something so I don't know.

Lots of good replies by the way. Thanks guys.

Was the tip all nasty and blackened or did it have a nice coating of solder on it? A dirty tip doesn't work well at all to transfer heat and will actively repel solder making it basically useless until it is cleaned or filed down.