Electronics > Beginners

Homebrew soldering iron.

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Cliff Matthews:
Ha! Joe's number one with a bullet!  :-DD  Are you sure you're not actually working for Pace in another universe?

Ian.M:
Fiberglass surfacing tissue, which is a 'felt' of fine glassfibre is readily available.  Use it with fire cement and you should be able to assemble a suitable refractory heater element without relying on exotic high temperature plastics or the availability of a good enough grade of sheet Mica that can be split thin enough to wrap round small cylinders.   However I question the wisdom of assembling the element directly on the bit.  Surely it makes sense to use a close fitting metal tube or sleeve on the bit with some means of clamping the bit in it, and winding the element on the sleeve so the bit can be replaced?

An interesting project would be a temperature controlled soldering gun with a thermocouple in contact with the back of the tip held in place by something like a thin crimped anodised aluminum sleeve. The transformer core could be built of stacked ferrite rings, and a push-pull SMPSU controller + power MOSFETs used to drive it.

Bonus points if you also make a hot air tip for it - a short coil of wire as the heater stuffed with rockwool as a diffuser, with the thermocouple running through the middle of it with the junction at the tip end, then more rockwool round it, inside a thin walled steel tube long enough that the gun end remains cool enough to connect to an airline, with a regulator to provide flow control and a solonoid valve controlled by the gun trigger.

joeqsmith:

--- Quote from: Cliff Matthews on January 19, 2019, 05:21:07 am ---Ha! Joe's number one with a bullet!  :-DD  Are you sure you're not actually working for Pace in another universe?

--- End quote ---

For work, I've used Pace for  many years.  At home, I have used various brands but I have seen very little problems with Pace and eventually changed when my last Wellar station died.   I am waiting for their tweezers like everyone else. 


--- Quote --- However I question the wisdom of assembling the element directly on the bit.  Surely it makes sense to use a close fitting metal tube or sleeve on the bit with some means of clamping the bit in it, and winding the element on the sleeve so the bit can be replaced?
--- End quote ---
That's pretty much how every iron I have had at home works.  At work I use the Intellaheat which has the heater integrated into the tip.  When the tip is shot, you replace everything.   For this iron, the fact that most videos show using a pencil for a handle, no feedback.... I doubt they are thinking they need something that advanced.   As the OP posted, a hunk of wire for the tip is pretty cheap. 

For the project itself, I question the wisdom of rolling your own.  I doubt I could make something as nice as what it offered without spending a fair bit more money.   Maybe you could roll your own and post is here.  I'm sure the OP would appreciate seeing something more professional than my minimal efforts.



This is the material I use on the dragbike to wrap the turbocharger.  Things get much hotter than a soldering iron.   I unwrapped it and installed this along with some higher temperature wire.   I ran it up well above where I would normally use an iron and just let it set.  No more smoking Pyropel.     

I also used a copper ring and crimped the TC very close to the tip.  If I decide to run it closed look, it should help with the controls. 

joeqsmith:
Just using Labview to control the bench supply to close the loop.  Quick and dirty.  Gain is up a bit too high but it's way better than it was running open loop.

The dips are soldering a large section of PCB.  It's not the right tip for it but it does add a fair bit of thermal load so I could watch the response. 

james_s:
Is this a "because you can" type of thing? Because I can't think of another reason to build a soldering iron from scratch. There's no way it will work as well as even a basic off the shelf soldering station. Regarding tip life, I recently replaced the tip on my Edsyn iron which I had been using for at least 15 years with the same tip. Properly cared for, the tip on a temperature controlled iron should last a very long time.

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