Amazing Soldering Iron put to the Test

[BrianHG]

It's time for the flame throwing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
(Yes, I know exactly what I'm doing here.) 

                      
(Just look at the name printed on it...)

[Gregg]

AVE needs one of these

[Bud]

Sex on a stick !

[BrianHG]

 

Sex on a stick !

Help, I can't stop laughing,,.,..j,jj.pok

[djnz]

Did you see the comments? The video has made severalh people want to buy it!

[GerryBags]

If you were desoldering a shed-load of turret mounted resistors, for example,  I can see this being handy. You could have the solder sucker in one hand and the iron in the other, and if you need a bit of extra solder it's right there.

[djnz]

It works, at a low price, why not?

The problem I see is that it pushes a fixed length of the solder wire forward with every push of the trigger. This makes me call it more gimmicky than actually useful. Also, $20 is not exactly cheap for soldering irons - you can get far more useful things for $20.

For less than $10 you can buy this:

[EEVblog]

[tooki]

The idiot adjusts the solder feeder to hit the tip, not the work...   

[KL27x]

^ I noticed that. I thought maybe it was a good thing to feed the solder slightly off the tip. Then you could squeeze the solder between the joint and tip, like by simply using your hand-eye coordination. OTOH, every robotic soldering setup I have seen feeds the solder right onto the tip. But this is usually a huge bevel tip. A pointy tip with crude solder feed is going to have problems, since it will have a tendency to extremes, leaving either too much or too little solder on a joint and very little capability to remove bridges.

I see this being a very useful tool for specific things. Sex on a stick, though? That is funny.

[darrellg]

The guy that came up with that must be a welder.

[mikerj]

The problem I see is that it pushes a fixed length of the solder wire forward with every push of the trigger.

The amount of solder that gets pushed out depends on how far you squeeze the trigger (up to a limit of course).  Looks reasonably controllable to me, though not a tool I'll be ordering any time soon.

[KL27x]

^Yep. It's just the same way you would use a glue gun. Probably the same mechanics.

[tooki]

^ I noticed that. I thought maybe it was a good thing to feed the solder slightly off the tip. Then you could squeeze the solder between the joint and tip, like by simply using your hand-eye coordination. OTOH, every robotic soldering setup I have seen feeds the solder right onto the tip. But this is usually a huge bevel tip.

I assume those robots have been carefully calibrated to feed the solder onto a very, very specific spot where the solder forms a perfect thermal bridge to the joint, and either the flux core melts and drops where it needs to go, or the work has had flux applied prior. (I would also assume that in an automated production environment, that the parts were relatively free of oxides and contaminants.)

This thing looks like it started out OK and then the fool adjusted it to apply solder halfway up the tip, far too high to be a good thermal bridge even. And the joints he makes with it show it: blobs of solder sitting on top of the pad, just like my first soldering attempts as an 8 year old with a radio shack 25W fire stick and zero training...

[GreyWoolfe]

I guess it is time to get rid of my Hakko FX-951 and Metcal MX-500 and get 2 of these since I have a spool each of leaded and lead free solder.

[leisergeist]

China: Answering questions nobody asked! 

Maybe if you only have one arm or hand...