hakko vs. weller

[Brian Donaldson]

I love my Hakko 929. I sometimes sleep with it.

[jam]

Brian,

I think you are sharing too much..........................

[dqswim]

I just went for it and got a hakko 936. Love it.. and you can get the whole esd soldering stations and tips for a little over 100. The iron is nice and thin, heats up super fast and stays cool.

I got mine from this place, I know nothing about them but the price was right, you get a free metal tip cleaner and it made it to me no problem.

http://www.kiesub.com/hakko936.htm


best of luck

[Magura]

Originally posted by Fred Dieckmann
[B Weller is riding on it's name and building stuff as cheap as they can make it IMO. Finding tips at my surplus store or Fry's for the Hakko is no problem.
[/B]

I guess Fred have just done the guy who asked the question a favour. My experience with weller is from the 10+ years old models, and they sure are good, but I asked a friend of mine thats a military radar tech., he said that the new wellers are not worth their price....he described them pretty much like Fred did.


Magura

[The Peasant]

I agree as well. I have used Weller for many years and they were always fairly good, but recently the quality of their products has definitely suffered. I have been using a Hakko 926 and 936 for 5+ years now and I'm VERY satisfied. I think that they are built even better than the old weller WTCP types.

[Brian Donaldson]

It's a common problem for American tools. Companys that used to make first rate stuff cash in their name for a buck at the Home Depot and such. Dewalt makes a lesser line of cordless drills that cost 1/2 the price of the model that I buy from a local industrial supplier. And they'er not worth the savings. I bought a Delta to have one around the house because the price was right. It was so weak that I gave it to my grandfather. It was useless to me. And it was 12v.
It's a sad thing to see a good company start putting their name on sh!t from Taiwan for a buck.
The evils of capitolism

[Magura]

I guess the issue about the quality going down is the same all over the western world. You see it no matter where youre looking. Whenever Im shopping for something that must be flawless, I usually have to spend a lot of time on testing samples and the like. Even relatively simple things seem to have a quality issue.

Ive experienced two relatively (to me) surprising cases recently.

The first case was when shopping for capacitors of the PP metallized film type (motor run). There have been a bit talk here on the board about such, but I assumed that a big western manufacturer like Ducati would not have quality issues....they sure are plenty expensive to not have such problems. My father have loads of hands on with this type of caps, and he sounded like he had swallowed a garden gate when I asked him to help me find some Ducati caps. Then I ordered a few different samples from different brands for testing....I sure thought that wouldnt be nessecery.

The second case was when a few people here decided to buy some silverplated wire. I thought it should be a matter of hunting down the cheapest supplier....a few samples later....also not the case. As well as with the caps....huge difference in quality from the best to the worst.

So I guess you could say that 10 years ago we have been spoiled with reasonable average quality without too much crap in between.....thats obviously not the case anymore.

Magura

[Ken L]

Love my hakko 907

Fred and Magura seem to have answered about the Weller _grin_

I hadn't done any soldering in decades.

Kind of dreaded that part when I started back DIY.

No longer is it drudgery with the Hakko.

If I had known it would be so easy with the Hakko, I might have started back sooner.

regards

Ken L

[The Peasant]

Now here is the last quality iron that Weller produced The venerable PU-1 (Gotta love that model number!!)

Solid bakelite case, 60 watts, takes standard Weller tips. This little beauty still works great, and will easily outlast me.

[rif]

I hate going off topic, but I agree with the previous quality statements. I don't know if it's American vs. China va. Canada vs. Vatican City vs. Liberia vs. Russian -- in other words, I wouldn't say American quality is slipping. That's much too broad.

I just bought a 17 bit drillbit set from HDepot made by dewalt. Thought it was a bargain at $18. Well the first bit I used bent when drilling into 1/2inch clear acrylic. I'll send the entire set straight to dewalt's corp. hq to complain.

Moral of the story -- don't just ask around what's the best XYZ nowadays. If a formerly trusted brand is no lnger so, send a letter to their coprorate hq -- chances are they don't even know. Find someone whose not in customer relations, like the CEO Maybe that will help to avoid a standard form letter reply.