New Toy :)
Rampage December 3rd, 2007I’ve been soldering for about a year now with a 45W Weller SP40L soldering iron and a stand from a different Black & Decker soldering iron:
I’ve done a lot of cap kits with this, and some smaller PCB work (I’m not a pro by any means). It worked well, but I was curious about temperature controlled soldering stations (aren’t we all?). I ended up charging a WD1001 and just got it today:
I had to finish a cap kit and change a flyback on a WG K7000 monitor from my Rampage game, and was waiting for this to come in so I could play with it. I ordered it from All-Spec.com. Their prices were far lower than anyone else’s that I looked at. I also ordered 3 extra tips, which you can see sticking out of the back of the stand above. Here is a closer pic of those tips and the soldering pen:
The tip at the very top of that picture is the one that comes in the iron. Weller sells a few different stations that are similar. Here’s a PDF that shows the different models and their features. The WD1001 comes with a WMP micro pencil for small work. It’s very comfortable. You can get your hands much closer to your work with it. I almost got the WD1002, which comes with a larger WP80 pencil.
One thing that impressed me that I wasn’t expecting was how fast this thing heats up. My old iron took 5 to 10 minutes to warm up. This one goes from 0 to 660° in 20 seconds! Check it out:
Another plus is that you can’t melt through the cord, and it doesn’t seem to get in the way like my other one. I can’t wait to do some finer detailed soldering with it to try out those small tips.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
I haven’t researched the temperature controlled soldering irons…I guess I don’t understand enough yet to know how you can tell if you need one. I assume an obvious reason would be the temperature control, and the speed at which it heats up, but is it the type of work one is doing on their games? I would assume I would know if I damaged a game board with the soldering iron being too hot because the board would stop working….and I haven’t experienced that yet.
Other than those first two reasons, why did you want to get this? You pretty much do all the same temperature soldering don’t you?
December 6th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
A regular soldering is perfectly fine for most work. A few things interested me in getting this one, from what I’ve read.
As soon as you touch a soldering iron to a component, its temperature drops. Because of this, they are designed to run at a hotter temperature than needed to solder so when that drop occurs they will still be hot enough to work with. This can wear out tips faster. Temperature controlled soldering irons keep the tip at the exact temperature you want constantly. If it senses a drop, it immediately adjusts.
Supposedly, if you use a regular soldering iron, they say a 25W iron is best. I had one when I first started and couldn’t seem to get the solder to melt for me. I switched to a 45W which has worked good. That’s the one you see in the first pic. Being able to control the temperature makes it less likely that you’ll lift a trace off a board. I haven’t lifted a trace completely before, but I have come close.
I’ve been doing a lot of soldering lately so I figured I’d upgrade, but you certainly can do fine with a regular iron.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I just noticed the video I posted in this post is gone. Damn Wordpress does that whenever I edit a thread…should be back there in a couple of mins.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Make sure in your profile settings to shut of the wysiwyg for editing a post. Or if you want to keep it, whatever. I know I did, because even when I messed with the core setup, the TinyMCE still stripped out a bunch of tags I like to use…
December 6th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Yeah, I noticed it doesn’t do that without the wysiwyg. I turn it off once in awhile and then back on. I have a Flickr plugin that makes it a lot faster to pull images into posts that it uses. I think when I didn’t see the video this time it just didn’t load for some reason. I refreshed and it was fine.
December 12th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
I own a Weller soldering iron that’s way better than the Radio Shack one I used to have, but that station you got there is awesome. I really like the way the grip goes down close to the tip, looks easier to control when doing small work.