i made my first few IC's with a standard 15 or 25 watt weller from homedepot, you might want to get a smaller tip then their standard wedge though

Quote:




I can't imagine why you keep hearing Weller, they are just overpriced compared to other irons of same quality. They've been around for a long time but today's Cooper Tools Chinese import Wellers are not the same thing your grandfather used.

Get it online, you won't get nearly as good a deal locally in most cases. Define exactly what you need in an iron.

Quote:



As we'd discussed previuosly, that is a serious flaw in using WTCPT. You don't WANT to be stuck at only one temp with any tip. Any adjustable iron that lets you adjust it is very easy to set to the temp required. It also allows using different solder, allows soldering fine parts to larger areas, using a hot fine point or very low temp for fine traces within a few seconds, no swapping irons or waiting for a cool-down to swap tips nor having to find some way to use a tool and hotpad to put hot parts aside while fiddling with it.

The WTCPT is a crippled iron, meant only for production line soldering to prevent the line worker from cranking heat too high to make their job easier and ruining delicate parts. DIY we are not in such a hurry that these fractions of a second in production numbers matter. In any situation having no control over the temp is worse than adjusting it to the temp you want. There is seldom going to be a situation where the temp of the WTCPT is randomly, exactly what the job called for. In short the other variables besides the tip are supposed to dictate the temp more than the tip itself does.

Quote:




Honestly there isn't anything worth getting that is less than about $30. As others have mentioned the Hakko Dash is prolly your best bet from Fry's.

For one small IC it just isn't worth it. Buy the IC, borrow an Iron or have a friend make the cable for you.

Quote:



First make some basic choices.

Adjustable or not. Benefit of the feature is obvious.
Station or not. Station is far more reliable method of adjustment than a minimally-adjustable control in a wand (which is rare but I mention it anyway), and allows the wand to be smaller diameter, and a lower voltage cord which is safer.

Ceramic element or not. Ceramic heats faster, usually the temp control is better, usually the result is tips with more mass that thermal cycle less, and it allows putting thermal sensor at the end closer to the end of the tip. Nichrome and other wire types are cheaper and the tips generally are too (avg price might be $2/tip for decent nichrome iron tips vs $5 for ceramic iron tips, excluding brands with high markup or especially good deals (eBay for example).

Range of tips available. Maybe you don't need a hot knife or 4+ sizes of 45' angle or whatever, but unless you consider it a disposible you probably want more than 5 tips available. With the mid-sized ceramic element irons many take the same tips, so when someone says brand X tips are good, you may be able to use those tips with a different brand of iron but research this ahead of time if it is important.

Does it look pretty? To some people form is as important as function. In a soldering station for $50 I would make this a last priority but that's got to factor into some people's choices because some irons are functionally equivalent but the prettier one seems more popular.

The truth is that unless you value a specific feature, among similar types of irons they are fairly modular and far more alike than different. To a certain extent a claim of one brand vs another is taking a very minor difference and stretching it too far. There are of course exceptions, very cheap Ratshack irons or very expensive with higher powered bases, but the basic station design is just a 24V transformer in a box with a knob, triac and feedback from a tip sensor, a silcone rubber cord to a plastic handle with a standard sized and spec'd ceramic element with a sleeve, retaining nut, sleeve, and tip that fits in the middle. If you can solder ok with one brand you should be able to equally well with another until you hit upon limitations in the station like max wattage vs job size. For example, the Hakko 936 is a decent station but there is no reason it will do any better than a clone of the same wattage rating and same overall design, unless you happen upon a really bad generic tip but with same basic design and dimensions, the tips for same size irons are interchangable on most. There are far fewer actual iron manufacturers than there are rebrands of these base designs.

For $50 delivered the following is the best option, IMO, unless you find a deal on eBay.
Xytronics 379. To hit that price point the wand is permanently wired and you exceed $50 pretty quick if you buy a lot of tips but that's the case with most medium or better quality irons. It isn't powerful enough to do really big jobs either but no stations are in this price range.

Quote:



We have an honest difference of opinion here. I use both and never have a problem with the tip set temperatures.

AFAIK the WTCPT is still made in the US.

If it is made in USA then I appaud their efforts to keep US economy stronger, but I would still wonder if it's actually made in US or just assembled there. My point wasn't that China can't necessarily make anything decent, more that within the price range there is not a lot of difference in irons that look similar in function.

Yes I agree. Wellers have been castrated and you don't want such limitations.

Quote:



That's good to know. The 936 was my second choice and had a feeling that the CS-1 was not really comparable quality wise. The reliability was my only complaint with the CS-1 (I was happy with the design, function, etc.. ) But obviously if it doesn't work at all then these points don't really matter. That being said, I'm very happy with my Circuit Specialists DMM which I bought based on what others on Head-Fi have said about it.

Quote:



Hard to know for certain.

This is the label from the back of my newer WTCPT. Date code is August 2001



The TC-201 and the stand don't say where they are from. The last Weller tip I bought says Made In Mexico. The Weller wrapper is that very Mexican red, white and blue. My Hakko tips say made in Japan. My last Plato wrapper went in the trash a few days ago

Next person that goes to Fry's -- Take a minute and look what the label on th e current WTCPT says.

Quote:



These shouldn't be hard to repair, what went wrong with yours? If you still have it, might only be a frayed wire or bad pot or triac, the typical power silicon and mechanical failure points on any device. They aren't terribly complex, given a working multimeter and that the entire thing is low voltage after the transformer, it's reasonably fixable.

Quote:



It wasn't holding a temp, so I did the recommended testing on the handpiece and was getting resistance readings out of normal. So I then soldered in a new heating element. At that point the indicator LED's lit and the iron was hot, but the second LED (indicates target temp reached when flashes) remained lit. I attemted calibration and adjusted via the pot with no avail. The tip seems to be going to max temp and holding, even with the pot fully down. Not exactly sure what's going on. The new element was soldered in exactly the same as the previous element. Possibly a short in the cable, althought doubtful considering only about 100 hours of use. Maybe something simple, but my electronics troubleshooting has lots of room for improvement.

duchamp, you left out a lot of specifics, but here's the pinout on the iron's plug. I suspect this along with measurements as mentioned below will find the fault in the handle, cord or plug. You can get a replacement handle for about $12, but Circuit Specialists shipping is kind of steep, it might be cheaper total cost here if factoring for that.

Pin Function
====================
1 - Thermal Sensor A
2 - Thermal Sensor B
3 - Tip/sleeve Gnd
4 - Heater A
5 - Heater B

There is only continuity between pin 1 - 2 and between pin 4 - 5, check that none are shorting out against another and not to ground pin either.

Heater resistance cold is probably too low to measure reliably with only a meter, Certainly under 1 Ohm but it was heating so we can ignore it.

Cold Resistance of pin 1 - 2 is approx 22 Ohm.
Setting the base temp to 340C, about halfway and letting temp stabilize, resistance of pin 1 - 2 (about 5 seconds after iron is unplugged from base, it will be rising as iron cools) is approx 9.5 Ohm

The calibration hole trimmer should not need changed to get the iron to work in general, it only fine-tunes the resultant temp vs pot travel. I would turn it back to roughly the original position it was in for the time being or in the middle of it's travel if you can't remember where it was set before then focus on it after rest is working.

what exactly is the advantage of having an adjustable temp iron? I mean, I know you want to keep the temp lower when soldering heat-sensitive parts such as ICs, but then why would you ever bother turning the heat back up if as long as it melts the solder? I've thought about a temp-adjustable station, but I don't want to have the added hassle of trying to figure out the right temp for every combination of solder/part/board

Pinkfloyd4ever, the key is in the thing you are assuming that doesn't stay constant. It's not necessarily true that it melts the solder, unless you only do joints with very similar thermal requirements and bought a fixed iron well matched to that limited set of tasks, or it was such a hot running iron to be an unnecessary risk to many smaller parts and tracks/pads on circuit boards. This is especially true with some of the lower grade single sided circuit boards, like found on many consumer electronics devices. I can't know everything you plan on soldering, but feel a more versatile station trumps one that can only do one thing - if a moderate iron cost increase is not an issue.

Soldering is about heating the area then flowing the solder onto that area, the safest temp to use is the minimum that melts the solder by heating the parts within a reasonable period of time but that temp varies. You must necessarily use a hotter tip to solder a larger area that 'sinks away that heat faster, or a larger tip or a combination of the two, else the tip was too hot for smaller items if it was a constant temp tip or entire iron.

The workaround if the iron at least varies with a different tip is to keep swapping tips or have a 2nd iron, the former an unnecessary annoyance (IMO) and the latter means buying two irons which is fine if that's in the budget but you have to start somewhere for the first decent iron bought - I would not want both irons non-adjustable, nor the first bought unless it was only a matter of what the budget allowed. A $10 iron can do what it's suited for (based on wattage and tip size) fine, but how many different fixed temp irons would you buy and leave on your desk/wherever if all your soldering jobs aren't exactly the same?

If you're not soldering a lot of small or especially heat sensitive parts you can often use a fixed temp iron fine, or of course two fixed temp irons, but there's still the issue of different solders with different melting points and whether you have the tips for the iron that is hotter of the two,

The other advantage of a soldering station is it's low voltage power cord, suppose an accident or defect or whatever had damaged the cord, over years it may even crack just from rot and some especially cheap irons don't even have heat resistant cords, you can melt right through it if you touched it with the iron even momentarily (Many Ratshack irons for example).

A temp adjustable iron also reduces tip wear and reheat time by allowing you to dial down the temp for a few minutes, instead of the only alternatives being running at full temp or unplugging then suffering a longer wait for it to heat up completely again. Some fixed temp irons are better than others though, the higher quality irons with ceramic heaters do heat faster but they encroach on the price-range of a station too. I suppose it could be personal preference to some extent, I agree Hakko Dash is a good iron but I would never pay their asking price for it unless I needed an AC powered portable iron for something, or found it real cheap on ebay, as the cost to move up to a station isn't much.

Gettting up to the temp you want from minimal temp setting on most adjustable-temp stations takes only a dozen seconds or so (depending on temp chosen). It will reduce cooking of flux residue too, to limit the upper temp, as many who have only single temp irons tend to buy the largest wattage to handle medium and big jobs they may do so it's always hotter than a lower wattage iron would've been.

As for trying to figure out the right temp, you will become accustomed to the iron and tip you're using and be able to make a reasonable educated guess based on the solder used and mass/structure of parts being soldered. Aim low in temp and if you find it needs be slightly hotter, turning the dial a small amount will get the temp up in very few seconds. It is easier to do than describe, it becomes subconscious, second nature.