Solder Iron care

[konzill]

I saw a you-tuber recommend that you coat your soldering iron tip with solder before turning it off and store it tinned?

He claimed it stopped the tip corroding. My first response to this is skepticism. I'd imagine that you really want to leave your equipment clean and dry.  So is this a good idea, a pointless idea or a bad idea?

[JustMeHere]

Yes, you should.  It keeps O2 away from the tip.

[KL27x]

This is solid advice. The iron layer of the tip oxidizes when the tin/solder layer is very thin. Very slowly at 300C, and very fast at 380C. If you blob the tip, this keeps the oxygen off the iron.

I use bevel tips for most of my work, and the solder tends to automatically blob over the flat face (that's the important bit), so it's almost automatic. I got a reminder, though, during a specific batch job where I needed the tip very starved to avoid bridges. I had gotten lazy and kept putting the tip back in the stand dry (daring my hakko tip to ever stop working) and the tip oxidized and needed some attention after several days of this.

Where the tip oxidizes, I easily restore it to tinning/wetting again, by careful use of fine abrasive stone. Just avoid the chrome.

Even the chrome on a hakko tip is pretty thick. I tried sanding the chrome back on a CF tip, and I gave up. I  resorted to prying/chipping it back with a small gouge. My goto 2.5 CF has lost some of the chrome, naturally, so it acts more like a regular bevel but still has chrome on the back of the heel, so it can do essentially all normal bevel stuff but with some benefits. I had a job where I wanted the same thing but in a 2mm, and it was a success but it took a long time to get the chrome layer back just about a 1mm or 2.

You can see the palpable thickness of the chrome layer and observe the softness of nickel layer under a stereo microscope at only some 20x. So's you can jab a blade pick right into the nickel at the edge and pry until the a bitty chip of the chrome breaks off... if you're lucky. Hakko does a good job with the chrome.

[mengfei]

my irons are over 10~15 years old & most of the tips are in tip-top shape 
these are those pointed ones but the first one I used was those Big heavy one's with the tip shaped like a U type using a flat copper, those type tend to degrade fast.

just before you turn off shake of the previous lead then coat it a bit with new lead, hang to dry then place in tool box 

oh the very old one looks like this

[tooki]

I saw a you-tuber recommend that you coat your soldering iron tip with solder before turning it off and store it tinned?

He claimed it stopped the tip corroding. My first response to this is skepticism. I'd imagine that you really want to leave your equipment clean and dry.  So is this a good idea, a pointless idea or a bad idea?

The blob of solder prevents oxidation, as others have said. Not only is cleaning the tip before turning it off a bad practice, you actually don’t want to ever clean it before putting the iron back in the stand. Ideally you’d apply more solder every time you want to set the iron down. Either way, one should get out of the habit of instinctively cleaning the tip before putting the iron in the stand.

1. turn on -> 2. clean tip -> 3. tin -> 4. make solder joints -> 5. tin -> 6. put away -> 7. turn off.

(Obviously you repeat 2–6 until you’re done.)