I have an Ungar 300 solder station that works awesome but tips are no longer available for it. So my question is has anyone swapped out irons on a station for a different one? The iron attached to it is a 3 wire unit so I can't imagine that it wouldn't work as long as I don't exceed the original wattage.
I have... and the short answer is it is not worth the trouble in most cases. Since your particular unit appears to be a power control style, rather than temp control, it would be significantly easier. I would assume your 3 wire unit has two wires to conduct the power and 1 for grounding the tip.
What you have to do it find an iron with compatible heater resistance and a similar power and voltage rating. If the resistance of the heater is too high, you won't be able to pump as much wattage through it. If it is too low, you will have to use a smaller portion of the dial. So you want to measure the resistance of your unit, hot and cold, and try to find a replacement with similar specs. Then solder the connector on it, using the 2 wires for power and the one for ground, leaving any temp sensor unconnected. There is a lot of specific info available on the hakko clone irons, for instance, if you dig around. Sometimes even on the ebay listing, they might include resistance of heater and/or the temp sensor for that model.
Some of the cheapest irons, for instance, use mains current limited by just a triac. These will have a higher resistance in the heater than one which uses a stepdown transformer to run at 24V. I think most of the replacement soldering irons you will find out there, hakko clones and zd929 and the like, are designed to run at 24v. If you plugged that into mains + dimmer and bumped the dial, you could turn it orange hot before it melted. And it probably wouldn't be safe, even if you were careful. It is not rated for safe use at that voltage.
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