Soldertip salvage

[tinitus]

Hi

Unfortunately I was careless and forgot all about my solder iron with power on

It was in perfect condition but now it looks like this, completely burned and black all over

I suppose that you know by now that its not functioning at all
Wont take solder and no heat transfer
It can melt the solder though, but it just drops off

Well, its not the first time so I wonder if there is any possible way to "repair" such a tip ?

I reckon its ruined fore good, but maybe there is some "secret tip" to make it work, at least until I find a new one

Its a Weller and works perfectly, handling different tip sizes, best I have ever had

 

[nukaidee]

you can heat it up again and use a wet towel and wipe it off, or take sandpaper to it.

 

[unclejed613]

weller makes a little metal can thing filled with solder and paste flux "foam". if the coating of the tip is still ok, heating your iron up and poking it into this and rolling it around will clean it up nice. once you burn a hole in the tip coating though, the copper inside will eat away on the inside, leaving a shell of coating material that won't heat well and will crumple every time you put any pressure on it to transfer heat. sandpaper will ruin the coating, as will touching the teflon tip of a solder sucker (teflon releases a tiny bit of fluorine gas, which damages the coating).

another type of tip cleaner that works well is a piece of desoldering braid or coax braid, and you melt some solder on it. when you melt the solder with the iron and rub the braid, the braid acts like a brush and scrapes the oxjde of, while the solder re-tins the tip. the flux also helps by reducing (chemical reduction, the removal of oxygen from oxide compounds) the oxides on the tip, leaving metal behind.

if it's not too far gone, just dipping the tip in paste flux while hot is enogh to clean it back up to useable condition

 

[tinitus]

That sounds right

Thanks

btw, maybe its time to try an old solder iron mounted with a silver tip

 

[tinitus]

weller makes a little metal can thing filled with solder and paste flux "foam".

another type of tip cleaner that works well is a piece of desoldering braid or coax braid

I used a piece of braided speaker wire, and plenty of solder
I had to repeat the process many times
And it actually worked so that I have a useable tip
Another tip with same problem was a bit worse, but it became useable as well
It only seems that I have to repeat this procedure at every power up
Maybe they will get better, or maybe worse
But its ok until I fiind new tips

Thanks fore warning about not to touch any plastics with the tip...it does happen

Along with new tips I will try and find that "cleaning-can"

Thanks fore the "tip"

 

[nukaidee]

oh. my iron doesn't have a coating.. its.. iron. lol. back from when my dad was in high school

 

[tinitus]

Ironicly its called a "long-life" tip

Some day I will have to try and mount one of my old irons with a silver tip..."ordinary" round silver

 

[timg11]

If you're in the market for a new soldering station, the Weller PES51 has a handy feature. It has closed loop control of temperature. As part of its control circuitry it has a timeout function. If the tip temperature doesn't vary (due to being used to solder something), after 30 minutes it turns itself off. If you are using it, it will not turn off.

Very nice for saving energy and soldering tips for all of us who sometimes forget and leave the soldering station turned on.

 

[tinitus]

A soldering station would be nice, and next on my list

But I have quite good news
After hundreds of solderings on my speaker xo my solder tip seems ok again
After repeated cleaning on braided wire/solder my precious tip still wasnt very good
It could be used, but when I cleaned it after work done, I had to repeat the "rubbing" in solder at start up

So, I decided to not clean it at all, but just being careful not to "pollute" it too much, and disconnect it immediately after soldering

So it just now happened what shouldnt
I accidentally "cleaned" the tin on my jogging pants
And big surprice
The solder tip was now smooth and shiny, just like new

I seem to remember someone suggested to NOT clean the tip after soldering, but only BEFORE soldering

Might be a good "tip"



btw, isnt that a nice picture by a cheap webcam

 

[Mr Evil]

...I seem to remember someone suggested to NOT clean the tip after soldering, but only BEFORE soldering...

If you clean it last thing, you leave the surface of the tip exposed to the air. Make sure it is tinned before turning it off and it will keep that nasty oxygen away.

 

[unclejed613]

i used to use PVC cable insulation to clean soldering iron tips, until i discovered that the elemental chlorine from the pvc got into the metal under the coating and destroyed the tip from the inside out. it really stripped the oxides off of the outside of the tip like nothing i've ever seen... just has that nasty hidden side-effect.......

 

[es44]

Tinitus, visit PC elektronik, and look for "vare nr. 51303199. I couldn't live without it.
Just don't put your nose too close to the smoke when you clean the tip
If i'm not much mistaken, we speak the same language daily

Best regards
Ebbe

 

[AuroraB]

A lot of modern tips, like the one shown, are nickel plated.
DO NOT USE SANDPAPER for cleaning these.
A stiff brush,e.g brass - softer than the tip, a wet rag, used on a hot tip is usually all you need.
- And the Weller TTC1 tip/tinner cleaner is very good! It even has a small sticky pad to fix it to your solder stand.

The modern lead free solders and fluxes leaves a lot dirtier iron than the old stuff... ( secret : I hate it! )

 

[unclejed613]

where i work i have a soldering iron that uses some kind of ceramic with a plated tip. i was surprised, but i replaced the tip a week ago, and i realized that the tip i had lasted over a year of constant use, and every once in a while, leaving the soldering station on overnight. the new lead-free solder is a real pain to work with, expecially when replacing SMT chips with a lot of pins. the high temps required to lift the old chip off the board sometimes lifts the glue holding the traces, especially on the usual "cracker board" material. the traces on G10 fiberglass boaeds are usually not a problem, but the cheap phenolic boards aew very difficult to work with desoldering tiny traces.

 

[ke4mcl]

when faced with a similar problem i just lightly sanded the tip and immediately flowed rosin core solder on it. good to go.

when it gets covered in gunk i give it a quick wipe on a damp sponge and flow fresh solder on it.

i use radioshack irons myself as ive learned to solder with just about anything that will get hot enough. i wouldnt go sanding on any of those ceramic tips though!

 

[unclejed613]

i recently had to ask the parts department where i work to order some of those ceramic tips. i asked for (and got, amazingly enough) a "screwdriver" tip, a pointed tip and a needle tip (for SOIC's). while i was waiting for those i had to replace my tip with a used one, which already had the "disease", but wasn't as bad as the one i already had. the new ones came in just in time, because the used replacement one had begun to collapse. i can't stress enough the warning about the tip coming in contact with chlorinated and fluorinated plastics. it really erodes the tip in a very short time. i have been using solder wick almost exclusively except in extreme cases where a solder sucker is the last resort, and it's slowed down the erosion process to next to nothing. when i use a solder sucker now, it's on the opposite side of the board to suck out plated through-holes. the other problem with tip erosion/ corrosion is the higher temps required for RoHS solder. if chlorination disease can be avoided, oxidation still can't, and the higher tip temps for this horrible mixture of metals will eat tips faster (as well as strip traces and pads off the board as fast as you can blink). there's nothing worse than to be removing an IC and have one or two pins stick because the best you can do is to get the solder melted to the consistency of wet cement. RoHS solder seems to have a tendency for the metals in it to separate, and when it does, you get chunks in the solder fillet that don't melt. what's worse is they seem to gather near the device pin.