The Aoyue station is a very good value. It's sold under many different brandings in the US as they will make a front faceplate with your company's name on it if you did enough volume to make it worthwhile. There is minimal gain in paying more for an equivalent Hakko, mostly minor cosmetic things like a finer finish on the wand handle but that is more of a photo opportunity than an issue in use. Maybe the Hakko would last longer. Maybe the Aoyue would. Flip a coin.
The Aoyue uses the typical ~ 6.5mm OD / 4mm ID tip size used by most medium wattage ceramic element irons, like the Hakko 900M. Thus with Hakko's name more popular, the cheapest way to get a lot of tips or different shapes is probably buying the Hakkos on ebay/etc. My Aoyue had a bit of cement residue where the thermal sensor was installed in the heating element, which needed lightly sanded to make the Hakko tips work as they are barely thicker, smaller ID barrel than the Aoyue but you wouldn't know by looking, they're very near the same.
The Aoyue uses the typical ~ 6.5mm OD / 4mm ID tip size used by most medium wattage ceramic element irons, like the Hakko 900M. Thus with Hakko's name more popular, the cheapest way to get a lot of tips or different shapes is probably buying the Hakkos on ebay/etc. My Aoyue had a bit of cement residue where the thermal sensor was installed in the heating element, which needed lightly sanded to make the Hakko tips work as they are barely thicker, smaller ID barrel than the Aoyue but you wouldn't know by looking, they're very near the same.
he he, all I need to do is put my tip and outer iron sleeve on the ebay hexacon to get it going! I can't wait, here's why:
I've used the Aoyue quite a bit in the past couple of days. It works nicely. Certainly much more nicely than a good Weller soldering pencil at twice the price -BUT it is nothing compared to what I'm used to. For light jobs it is great, like soldering a component into a board or something similar. Under heavy load, like soldering some snap in caps to a copper pour it loses heat fast. It does the job but I'm used to an iron that can hold it's temp more consistently and dump more heat. I found that with the Aoyue it's hard to get that shiny - hot - quick touch solder joint on heavier stuff.
-still a great value though
Yes true, but that holds for any iron of 40 – 50 watts with a small tip. The trick is to use a heavier tip like a 3 - 4 mm screw driver tip -> the long ones. These tips have much more heat capacity so the temperature doesn’t drop to much. For real heavy work you’ll need a 80 – 100 watts iron anyway.
Pjotr said:
Yes true, but that holds for any iron of 40 – 50 watts with a small tip. The trick is to use a heavier tip like a 3 - 4 mm screw driver tip -> the long ones. These tips have much more heat capacity so the temperature doesn’t drop to much. For real heavy work you’ll need a 80 – 100 watts iron anyway.
So true, I find a 3.2mm chisel plus a second wand with the original conical will cover over 80%, swapping tips gains another 10%, and the last 10% is handled by a dual range 150W gun style. Almost forgot the 2mm 45' for SMD.
I don't entirely disagree.
My $300 station can replace the heat much faster than the Aoyue with equivalent size tips. A larger tip certainly would help but is seems less necessary on a better product. The difference in cost is almost ten-fold - and happily the difference in performance isn't
My $300 station can replace the heat much faster than the Aoyue with equivalent size tips. A larger tip certainly would help but is seems less necessary on a better product. The difference in cost is almost ten-fold - and happily the difference in performance isn't
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