Electronics > Beginners
Should I be worried about tip lifetime when buying my first soldering station?
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Shock:
Could always spend a few hours or so replating your tip to save a few bucks.

grizewald:

--- Quote from: Reiska on May 07, 2019, 07:41:15 am ---I'm a pure hobbyist, though an electrical engineer by schooling and doing something totally different for work, and fed-up with the old hand-me-down mains powered soldering irons that I have and have decided to purchase a proper temp. controlled soldering station.


--- End quote ---

I was in the same situation a while back and after discounting the Ersa, Pace and JBC stations due to their high price, I settled on a Xytronic LF-3200 which I bought from Reichelt in Germany for half the price that Elfa in Sweden wanted for one. (see: https://www.reichelt.com/se/en/digital-high-frequency-soldering-station-120-watt-esd-station-lf-3200-p142531.html)

I am very pleased with it. Tips cost 5 Euro or less and the iron goes from room temperature to 320C in about 15 seconds. I use brass wool to clean the tip and this is what comes with the iron.

Shock:

--- Quote from: grizewald on May 08, 2019, 10:26:54 am ---I was in the same situation a while back and after discounting the Ersa, Pace and JBC stations due to their high price, I settled on a Xytronic LF-3200 which I bought from Reichelt in Germany for half the price that Elfa in Sweden wanted for one.

--- End quote ---

Xytronic is a Taiwanese brand so it should be the cheap. 320C in 15 seconds is not comparable to the Pace or JBC models which only take a few seconds. Xytronic also uses regular tips not cartridges which probably explains why they heat a little slower for their stated 120W and the price (which is average for that style of tip). The tip design looks Weller inspired.

So it's cheaper but also a different station. It would be good to see it's performance compared to other tip over heater style irons. It probably falls somewhere between the Hakko FX-888D and Ersa i-Tool iron but with less tip selection. It's been mentioned a few times it's difficult to work out Ersa power as they are less than clear how a 150W iron draws full power from a 120W station sharing 2 channels (Metcal are the same). But anyway the i-Tool is 9 seconds to reach 350C so a higher performing iron.
KL27x:

--- Quote ---But stay away from 900M style tips.
There's no need to buy anything that uses them any more. They are old technology.
Get the newer Element-within-Tip technology.
--- End quote ---
Definitely stick with irons that use the much newer T18 tip technology. >:D



--- Quote ---
--- Quote ---
--- Quote ---Quote from: OwO on Yesterday at 05:44:09 pm
Are there unplated tips? I have been using a cheap temperature controlled iron and the tip it came with for 5 years. I've grinded one side of the tip to add a "flat" face, and the newly exposed face adheres to solder just as well, so I think this tip has no plating at all.
--- End quote ---

Very old irons had unplated tips but no one uses them any more afaik.
--- End quote ---

A newly grinded face will adhere solder good but it will oxidase and char up very quickly.
You will find you have to keep re-grinding it every time you use it.
--- End quote ---

Very old irons more commonly had pure copper tips. It sounds like OwO might have a tip with a very thick iron plating or perhaps made of pure iron.

The iron layer can be quite thick on an iron. Something in the neighborhood of 1 hundredth of an inch on high quality irons seems to be the norm. I've seen cheaper tips with iron that is probably a few times thicker, at least.


--- Quote ---A newly grinded face will adhere solder good but it will oxidase and char up very quickly.
You will find you have to keep re-grinding it every time you use it
--- End quote ---
If you do not grind all the way through the iron layer, then there's no problem. There's nothing special about the surface of that iron layer. Until you pop through to the copper core, there is no issue. You can sand, grind, file, to some degree. Some of the really cheap irons have tips that are pure copper with a thin nickel plating (10-100x times thinner than an iron coated tip). These tips will oxidize and dissolve away in the solder once the nickel wears through, which doesn't take long even if you take care of the tip. These are the tips that you have to file to keep them working.

In short: most irons have a very thick iron layer that you might never wear out, if used properly. Some of the butane powered irons get so hot they basically burn the tip from the inside out. Some tips have a metal sheet on the inside of the hole that can delaminate and fall out when changing the tip. Most quality tips will wear out when the chrome plating starts chipping away. I have heard some complaints about JBC tips on this forum, but it sounds like the complaints are that the tip doesn't wet as readily as some other brands. It might be something to do with the iron alloy they use. I doubt they are burning holes through the iron. I've only ever seen that happen on a butane powered iron, myself.

As OwO has done, I have judiciously sanded and filed on tips before with no ill effect. One stroke too far, and the tip will go bad. But there's typically a lot more iron there than most people seem to believe. Some people just have no concept of a hundredth of an inch in this context. If you take a standard PCB that is 0.062" thick, the iron plating on your soldering iron is about 1/6 or 1/7th the thickness, and it is highly wear resistant. Heck, try sanding through a copper ground plane on a pcb and see how long that takes. On a 1 oz copper pour board, that copper is only 1.4 thousandths of an inch thick. How many times could you shine up a copper ground plane with fine sandpaper or steel wool before you wore it through? A heck of a lot of times.

The most obvious difference between a hakko tip and a clone tip is in the finishing. The knockoff tips are more crudely finished before the (much-thinner-than-the-iron-layer) chrome is plated on, and the chrome will not hold up to the same level of abuse before it starts to flake off, usually started at the edge and working up/back. The exposed iron layer which is the wettable surface might also be more crudely finished, with larger sanding/grinding marks, but that part can be trued up if you want, using sandpaper. But internally, the cheaper tip might also have a less uniform thickness in the iron layer and/or a much thicker iron layer with less copper in it.
grizewald:

--- Quote from: Shock on May 08, 2019, 12:07:56 pm ---Xytronic is a Taiwanese brand so it should be the cheap. 320C in 15 seconds is not comparable to the Pace or JBC models which only take a few seconds. Xytronic also uses regular tips not cartridges which probably explains why they heat a little slower for their stated 120W and the price (which is average for that style of tip). The tip design looks Weller inspired.

So it's cheaper but also a different station. It would be good to see it's performance compared to other tip over heater style irons. It probably falls somewhere between the Hakko FX-888D and Ersa i-Tool iron but with less tip selection. It's been mentioned a few times it's difficult to work out Ersa power as they are less than clear how a 150W iron draws full power from a 120W station sharing 2 channels (Metcal are the same). But anyway the i-Tool is 9 seconds to reach 350C so a higher performing iron.

--- End quote ---

I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here. Do you dislike my choice? Did I mention any comparisons about how long different soldering stations take to get up to temperature? (And honestly, is 9 seconds or 15 seconds even remotely important?) What do you have against things designed and made in Taiwan?

Anyway, I was merely offering an alternative to the suggestions already made in this thread. I have used plenty of Weller and Pace kit professionally and they are, of course, excellent tools. Whether the prices charged for them are realistic for a hobbyist's bench is another matter. From the point of view of hobbyist use, the Xytronic meets all my needs and I thought it would be good to offer an alternative to the very expensive options being suggested to the OP.

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