Practical 900-series iron tip sizes

[VSV_electron]

Please give me some insight into what 900-series iron tips would be of practical use for my tasks and which ones would be likely a waste of money.

I'm mostly into the traditional through-the-hole solder job with DIP IC packages being my major interest. This is mostly about the 8-bit vintage stuff and some analog toys. Occasionally I'm planning to solder some SOP and SMD things when the situation dictates so.

My first question is: Do I need the 1.2 mm chisel tip, perhaps for the smaller SOP and SMD stuff?

At the moment I'm planning to get the following chisel tips: 3.2 mm, 2.4 mm, 1.6 mm.
Beside those which I consider the most useful a few more: couple of K(SK) and 2C(3C).
Please correct me on the above choice if you see it impractical.

Let me round up by repeating that I'm most uncertain about the 1.2 mm chisel tip - whether I need one or not. What does your experience tell you about that one?

[VSV_electron]

Anyone, please?
I want to buy a batch of the tips by mail and I want to get the ones that are most useful for the purpose I stated above.
Let me please reiterate that I'm mostly unsure about the 1.2 mm chisel tip.
Please comment on the other tips I consider as useful. Is my choice reasonable enough?

[donlisms]

There are so many soldering-related threads here, that maybe everyone decided to take the day off!  I have a couple of thoughts.

One is that I'm not sure it's possible to generalize so that different people could leverage each other's experience to decide what tips to get.  I think it gets down to the specific things you want to solder, very specifically.  My approach would be to make a best guess about the tip selection, buy the minimum, try them for a while... live with them... and along the way, if you find yourself saying "I wish I had a ...", then get one.

Another is that some people like chisels and some seem to like other styles; I like chisels, and I use mostly the 1.6 and 2.4.  I have a 0.8 that I'm not sure I've ever really needed... maybe for the 0402's, I don't remember.  The 1.2 I have used from time to time for smaller SMD components.  I've used the 3.2 or whatever it is for big audio connectors and switches and such, with wire-to-massive-terminal connections.

More important than all that, I think, is understanding that flux gets the surface tension in the right place so that the joint can form and cool happily.

And then...  tip quality matters.  It's everything.  It's the thing doing the actual work; if you had another heat source feeding that tip, even a perfect heat source, the quality of the tip is going to be what gets the joint done.  In other words... don't spend money on cheap tips.  I have a variety pack I got on a popular but generally disliked auction site, for my KSEGR, they were very cheap, and they're just horrible.  Several of them were broken right out of the box, and their temperatures are unstable and all different.  They just weren't getting the job done.  I started buying genuine T-15 Hakko tips, and my life changed... birds are singing, the sky is blue, and all is well with my soul.  I would rather have one one, or even two, good tips, than a nice selection of various styles of bad tips.  I think if I had only one, it would either be a 1.6 or 2.4; probably 2.4 to cover the audio connectors I often work on. If I only had two, it would be both of them.  Then I would save my pennies by not eating for a month, and buy a 1.2 or a 3.2 or whatever, depending on what projects I was working on and what issues came up while I was working.  And then, I think, it would be a long time before I got the urge to buy another one.

I don't know what a "900-series" iron is; I'm aware of a couple model numbers in that region, but I'm not sure what you're working with.  Nor do I know what your budget is, nor what you work on (in detail), and so on.  So I'm suggesting what my experiences have lead me to; if I knew then what I know now, that's how I'd start.

[VSV_electron]

...
I think if I had only one, it would either be a 1.6 or 2.4; probably 2.4 to cover the audio connectors I often work on. If I only had two, it would be both of them.  Then I would save my pennies by not eating for a month, and buy a 1.2 or a 3.2 or whatever, depending on what projects I was working on and what issues came up while I was working. 
...

Thanks much for a detailed write up on the subject!
That's all I need to know for now and what you wrote is fully in line with my understanding of the matter.

[Vovk_Z]

You need something small for SMD, in between 1.2 ... 1.6 mm (it depends on how small SMD size you re going to use).
2.4 mm tip is a universal size for a 'general use' with thorough-hole components and wires.
And you may need something >=3 mm (3-4 mm) for a large wires or large copper PCB polygons.


But I would rather look at T12/T15 soldering station instead of 900-series.