My Weller WTCP soldering iron is about 50 years old and still works fine. Its tip sets and controls its temperature so it does not have a useless temperature adjust knob that is always set wrong.
It is about 60W and its tip lasts for many years of heating all day long.
Oh yeah!
My old school Weller WTCP Series TC20? ceased being 'reliable' some years back (it either worked great or so-so intermittently) so I shelved it and used some others till I could find some brain time to sort it out
One day as I was considering to sell it off as parts and get some storage space back, I decided to pull the sucker apart and upon careful inspection found the two 'break thin' bare wires that go to the 240/24 volt transformer primary were loosely wrapped around the power switch contacts
I purchased the unit brand new in the box from the local distributor btw
After a couple of tries (and 'heat/brittle breaks' and other adventures) I successfully soldered them on to some short stranded 'extension' wire leads and then used crimps to attach to the switch,
and noted on testing it was working better than it ever did, but... intermittently
Almost gave up on it till I stumbled on the solder iron lead connector to the base station was mating loosely even though it had a bayonet style of 3 pin connector.
Fixed that issue and now the Weller is a 'go to' workhorse again, works like a champ
I wonder how many other units with this set of problems are sitting in landfills ?
BTW guys, not only do I have the general purpose PTA '7' 700F tips, but also '8' 800F which I may have bought for lead free
crap solder use
and one engraved label
'9' 900F (welding rod, LOL) which I must have bought for the occassional tight space chassis bond cooking scenario
Anyway, this Weller isn't going anywhere now and doesn't need a dial to play with temperature,
the 7 tips in conical and chisel point just about cover all bases with any size lead/flux solder,
and the 8 and 9 are there if I need to get medieval