Good solder station?

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#101
Static is a problem and have setup several places for NIST MIL spec compliance. What is not normally seen is the flooring surface where these charges are picked up from. The are many different products wide and varied depending on needs. From stress relief mats, flooring and varied carpet types as well as surface treatments. The latter sold specifically for this market are seriously expensive topical treatments. What is interesting something as simple as watered down fabric softener sprayed onto surfaces works 99% as well. Yes has to be periodically reapplied, but they all do 😉

Go for the Hakko, lowest maintenance cost, tips last a looooooong time. Have a high thermal mass for their power rating and excellent thermal contact for instant heating. Very precise temp reg.
Also don't mix ag solders with reg pbsn types with the same tip. Buy some spares of your favorite sizes/shape. Makes for quicker change up as the silver will rapidly oxidize with alot of retinning to keep it fit for duty.
 
#108
Not sure what the Xytronic guys mean by 'High Frequency', but the soldering station in your link looks like a conventional heater. Look at the connector for the soldering iron, seems to be the usual 4-pin low voltage connector found at many cheap 24V stations. Almost certainly no HF heating is used here.

Personally I wouldn't trust any vendor with a website which looks like that...

Regards,
Rundmaus
 
#109
A quote from the user manual:

"Solder wand runs from 36 Volts for safety and with 90W high power PTC heater for a super-fast heat-up and quick temperature recovery."

High Frequency means to them that you're able to do a lot of solder joints in short time due to the high power heater. Nothing about HF heating, only a conventional PTC element.

Rundmaus
 
#110
Rundmaus said:
Not sure what the Xytronic guys mean by 'High Frequency', but the soldering station in your link looks like a conventional heater. Look at the connector for the soldering iron, seems to be the usual 4-pin low voltage connector found at many cheap 24V stations. Almost certainly no HF heating is used here.

Personally I wouldn't trust any vendor with a website which looks like that...

Regards,
Rundmaus
Click to expand...

The manual says that it is a high frequency heater:
http://www.howardelectronics.com/xytronic/Images/LF-3000 INSTRUCTION MANUAL(2010.11.17修正).pdf
 
#111
Yes,

on that figure showing the innards of the iron. Marketing ******** or wrong translation from the probably chinese manufacturer manual. A PTC heater is a resistive heating element as found in almost any low-voltage soldering station. The connector used for the soldering iron is barely capable to carry the current for 36V/90W convenctional heating, how do you expect any HF to be carried to the iron without a coaxial or waveguide connector?

Rundmaus
 
#113
Rundmaus said:
Yes,

on that figure showing the innards of the iron. Marketing ******** or wrong translation from the probably chinese manufacturer manual. A PTC heater is a resistive heating element as found in almost any low-voltage soldering station. The connector used for the soldering iron is barely capable to carry the current for 36V/90W convenctional heating, how do you expect any HF to be carried to the iron without a coaxial or waveguide connector?

Rundmaus
Click to expand...

We are talking about HF, not UHF. Jeez....

There are several different brands of HF eddy current soldering stations on the market.
 
#114
Rundmaus said:
A quote from the user manual:

"Solder wand runs from 36 Volts for safety and with 90W high power PTC heater for a super-fast heat-up and quick temperature recovery."

High Frequency means to them that you're able to do a lot of solder joints in short time due to the high power heater. Nothing about HF heating, only a conventional PTC element.

Rundmaus
Click to expand...

I thought they meant that also, but no, they really do my HF heating. They produce two models with HF eddy current heating elements.
 
#116
tinitus said:
hmm ... :scratch2:
heat up time for the Ersa Pico/Nano is something like 5 seconds

you are barely getting seated, and it is ready to solder instantly
and that is really nice 😉
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not saying these are the best soldering stations out there. I am intrigued by the HF eddy current heating technique though. They seem to specify these for lead-free soldering, which requires a higher temperature. I don't know enough about the whole soldering field of technology to really understand the complete details.

Still, a 120 watt soldering station for $179 doesn't seem like a bad price to me. That's a lot of power.
 
#117
for soldering in other places than on the work bench I would not use a solder station
but instead take a traditional solder iron
I still have my old Weller Magnestat W60 with fresh tips ready for that
unfortunately also cost almost like a good solder station
 
#120
A virtue of the Metcal irons (at least here in the USA) is the variety of used tips on eBay. I have a number of them including special ones for opamps and smt resistors. The used tips I have bought have all been quite useable. If you have the 26 MHz version there are a lot of parts and tips floating around as well as older irons. For surface mount parts that need a really fine tip but a lot of power it would be hard to beat. I have a power meter on mine and its interesting to watch the power shoot up when you touch a joint. On a big solder lug you can see when the lug is hot enough from the power dropping.

The HF eddy current iron is different from the Metcal. The Metcal uses the curie point of the tip to control the temperature at the tip. The eddy current ones must have a separate sensor for the temperature.
 
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