Cleaning solder iron tip

[KL27x]

Ok I'm done with this, kid. You're trying my patience.

I'm disappointed you can't admit a mistake.

I'm tired of reading and responding to your disrespectful drivel.

I admit I lack respect. It's my nature. I ask none from you, and if you want it from me you have to earn it.

It is clear that you're a young pup and you have gone to great lengths to avoid admitting that and that your relevant experience level

Because you need relevant work experience and education to clean a soldering iron? You're the professional machinist of 20 years that can't machine something 4+ mils thick? What do you use your micrometer for? To send stuff back to the magic place that makes things to your customers specs?

- though claimed to be extensive -

Reading comprehension fail, again.

I'm sure the other members who actually manage to read all of this will be able to easily make their own judgements on who is more trustworthy and who is backtracking like crazy.

I'm counting on it.

Again, DON'T use a file or coarse abrasive on plated soldering tips guys.

Yeah, because that is what I recommended all along?

People who aren't trying desperately to act like they know it all post REFERENCES to prove their assertions.

Because if someone else said it, it must be true. That is hilarious. I have a good story about that... Ask Tooki.
 

[tooki]

Yeah, uh huh, aaaaallll of us are wrong and totally misunderstood what you said? No, it’s more likely that you wrote stuff that’s nonsense, and you just don’t like being called out on it. And by “more likely”, I mean that that’s definitely what happened here.

[KL27x]

I'm sorry for my tone, but when I make a comment that is helpful to the OP, and then spend 3 posts explaining to you why I wasn't dissing Ersa, only for eKretz to pop in to say "Ersa Awesome; you idiot," why would I feel immediate respect to this guy who wants to be my pops and call me kiddo? Defenders of Ersa unite? I never said anything bad about Ersa to begin with. 

I'm sad to be part of the problem, here. I realize I am. And I may have talked halfway out of my ass about how hakko tips are made. I could definitely be wrong on that. I searched some patents and only found recent Hakko patents since 2004 and beyond. There are many that cover for instance sintered powder formation of the tip portion of the iron and and the silver soldering to the other components. But lots of other stuff, too. Not the smoking gun from my memory.

More non-professional REFERENCE points:
Since my only bastard file was decomissioned years ago due to being to fine and too dull, not cutting well at all, I used a coarse needle file. 900M tip chucked in a machine vice, and went at it with heavy strokes, full abandon mode, focused right at pointy tip of a fine conical (about 30 degree angle over the very tip). It took 14 strokes to expose the copper. This is removing essentially 1/3 the diameter of the tip to hit paydirt, and very obviously putting a deformation/bevel to get there. On the back of the tip that goes over the heater, I did 50 strokes on the side of this 1/4" cylinder without finding copper, making a nice big flat spot.

Then I just cut it apart coronal and longitudinal. The iron layer is ~8.5 mil thick all the way around. At the back, I was able to peel it off the copper partway to measure with high accuracy. At the tip, it looks about the same thickness, maybe a little thinner. My filing on the side of the back part was nearly all the way through, it turned out. The shell is hard. It is not very malleable. But it didn't crack or split. So I can't separate it all the way, yet, without perhaps cutting it into smaller slices.

If this was consistent, then on a thicker tip, say the face or side of a big hoof, you could do a really good amount of filing.

I feel dirty for having done this, but I get easily obsessed with being right.  Unhealthy, yeah.

eKretz can have all the PhD's and professional work experience in the world, but does that make it ok for him to twist someone else's post out of context so he can correct them? Even setting aside the fact that he is wrong, lol.

So they just get uhhh electroplated with 8.5 mils of iron, and they come out of the bath perfect and smooth? Too thin to do any final machining or polishing, but I can put 50 file strokes on it?

Additional info:
The inside iron layer is different. And I got a piece to peel away, completely. The surface of the copper underneath is silvery all over. The outer layer at the very back looks to be quite a bit thicker than 8.5 mil, but it hasn't peeled. I'm going with 12 mils. Will try to work on it some more. Ahh, the inner part that peeled away is a steel-ish insert. Magnetic, but presumably something more conductive than steel. Then there is a much thinner iron plating on the inside of the barrel, maybe just a few mils, compared to 8 to 12 mils on the outside. 

There is almost no silver/iron over the ring at the very back of the tip. The thickness there is almost nil. Like it was cut, there, then plated only very thinly, maybe with just chrome.

Yeah, so Tooku.

Yeah, uh huh, aaaaallll of us are wrong and totally misunderstood what you said? No, it’s more likely that you wrote stuff that’s nonsense, and you just don’t like being called out on it.

You would have some experience with that? I'm not the one that ran away. And I'm not talking about eKretz.

I'm still here, even though the only 2 people that care are just trying to prove my manners are wrong.

[tooki]

Ok, I think I figured out the source of confusion: with regards to the crusty old hot nail looking thing, you referred to that as a “picture” posted by the OP. Except that wasn’t a picture, it was a YouTube link which eevblog automatically embeds. The OP did, however, actually post a picture, and it was of the Ersa tip. So when you referred to the iron in the picture posted by the OP (and described it as junk), we all (reasonably) understood this to mean the only picture posted by the OP.

I suggested that maybe you were confusing the picture and the video and you denied it, but a careful rereading of your posts confirms I was right.

[KL27x]

Yes, i called it pic instead of link the first two times. I see now how confusing it was to call the linked video thumbnail a pic. That was a mistake; you are right that I made this mistake.

I suggested that maybe you were confusing the picture and the video and you denied it, but a careful rereading of your posts confirms I was right.

You suggested I confused the thumbnail with the OP's iron. And I indeed denied it, because I never confused it for his iron/Ersa. And in my mind, I differentiated between the two things in this post. If that wasn't clear enough to the reader from the get go, the next post might have helped.

Or did you accidentally confuse the thumbnail of the youtube video showing how not to fix a gnarly iron? Cuz that's not the OP's iron…)

I purposely associated the pic/link the OP posted as the one he used to show that sanding a tip is necessarily a bad idea.

That sentence is pretty bad in hindsight, lol. But the OP was clearly not confused. He knew which post I was replying to and quoting from. And he knew I was differentiating between the two things. He posted the vid to make a point; I refuted that point, suggesting some irons have a very thick iron layer; I am not certain where the Ersa fits in; but the one in "the pic" looks like the cheap kind with the costume jewelry thin iron plating. But not everyone else bothered to follow the thread or to backtrack to find the post I was refuting. I didn't post this random info out of the blue for no reason.

In looking at the post in isolation, I see how confusing it could be. But if you read what followed rather than scanned for what you wanted to see, you would have gone the long way round to think I said a bad word against Ersa. eKtretz chose to take the long way round on not only that point, but everything else I posted; and in at least some instances he is curiously not even in the right ballpark for a machinist. He stretched my words to the extreme of how that could be taken badly, and I am still on my feet. But his own posts include indisputably incorrect statements that are even more ridiculous considering his resume boasting. This is why "I'm a disrespectful pup?"  I owe an apology for not taking that crap lying down?  He went out of his way for a fight. He came at me swinging and didn't pull any punches. What else should he expect when he throws wild and steps his chin into my glove, other than for me to return in kind?

eKretz caught me spinning a tall tale. Speaking above my pay grade. He called me out. I would have accepted that. But instead of starting and stopping there, he attempted to disprove everything I said, including the parts that still hold true. It's him spinning the tales, now, and it's regarding something way more vital to the actual topic. A good pup let's that slide?

[Gary.M]

Kl27x. The only files I have that are 'bastard' files are fairly aggressive things. I wouldn't go anywhere near my soldering iron with them.

[KL27x]

Good to know, Gary. 

Mine was a Nicholson bought at an estate sale. But I think it was wore out or a modern junk one. The other smaller file I picked up turned out great.

[KL27x]

This is a stock clone T12 knife tip. If you can't tell from the pic, these tips are chrome plated everywhere except the actual bevels on the end. 1206 resistor for reference.
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A better view of the tip, which has been wiped free of solder best I could.
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These look like grinding marks to me.

I don't know where is the tip I sanded smooth; I might have thrown it away when the chrome flaked off the sides. If you have a brain fart and start sanding on the chrome, you will see how thin that is. But I used it for several months and other than OCDing while not thinking and messing up the chrome, the tip was fine. I also sanded out the marks on the face of a 3mm bevel, which I still use. Sanding out these marks doesn't seem to affect the tinning/performance, though. So I wouldn't necessarily bother doing it for the shape/smoothness. But it gives an idea of how much wear/oxidation/cleaningl/life is in some irons.

900M tip: This is 15 strokes of the file, tip chucked solidly in a vice, with intent to destroy it. After hitting the copper, I did one more to be sure it was copper. You can see that the shape of this tip would be dramatically changed by the time you would erode through the copper. This started out a conical tip, not a bevel.
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This is the flat spot filed on the side, where the plating is pretty much 12 mils thick. I did 50ish strokes before breaking out the dremel. The 5" file I used is pictured. This is almost all the way through the 12 mils of iron plating. 50 sounds like a lot, but the first several strokes skated a bit, getting through the chrome. And this is a lot larger surface area than the tip.
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A cheap firestick tip can have an iron (or maybe nickel) plating even thinner than the chrome on a hakko/ersa. But when you get into plating thicker than a mil, up to 4+ mils, I imagine there is going to be some machining/shaping to get the crisp points and edges, esp on knives and hoofs. (The Hakko chisels and screwdrivers I have are pretty rounded on the edges and more, uh, blob-shaped.) Not to mention those sharp points on the fine conicals and BR tips.

Bonus, here's a can of my GF's soda sanded with the coarsest paper I have (not on a power tool), 120 grit. It's still unopened. [Imgur](

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[psysc0rpi0n]

I'm stunned when I see where this thread went!

To be honest I also got a bit confused about both KL27x and eKretz posts and opinions not by not understanding what each one was referring to but because their opinions were roughly opposite. I couldn't even realise at a first glance there was a confusion regarding the picture I accidentally posted and the video link. And that picture (thumbnail) was uploaded without me knowing. Only after I click "Send" or "post" or whatever the button says to actually post a post, I realised there was a thumbnail there! This happened because I tried to upload like 6 pictures at once, and then I got an error message from eevblog saying files were too large. So I cancelled the pictures upload but even so, there was that thumbnail that stubbornly was yet uploaded.

Anyway, this thread got to a point there gone way beyond my knowledge levels and needs but I still appreciate because I knowledge that there is quite some advanced technology even in soldering iron tips. I never thought about all those different layers and that makes me tend to agree to not use any sandpapers or heavily abrasive products to try to fix/clean/maintain my soldering iron tips. If we take good care, progressively, of our tips, they wont need much of cleaning or maintenance, so I hope!

With this said, I'll avoid at all costs to have to do any cleaning/fixing procedures to my tip by taking good care of it over time. Tips are expensive and I cannot afford to just let the tip degrade and not do anything to avoid it!

As some said, the wet/moist sponge is not that important and I do have one but it already have quite some visible residues of rosin and solder leftovers. The brass wool ball I have that came with my Ersa is still ok to use I guess. So, for now I'll just keep shaking the brass wool ball to keep it free of big solder bits and use it more often than the wet sponge!

[KL27x]

I'm stunned when I see where this thread went!

If you feel like  , congrats. You're normal.
I go off the rails, about twice a year. 

[Gary.M]

There must be a therapist somewhere who specializes in removing the 'engineer' component from one's personality, some here could sure use it.

[KL27x]

It's important to keep. Without it, the world will stop working.

It's fine when senior dude tells the junior engineer his trace angles are too acute, if that makes him feel more important. When he starts incorrectly fucking with things that matter, making blue red and red green out of ego, it starts a chain reaction and the world becomes stupider.  Engineering failure are often due to politics, and not necessarily because of politicians.