My Ultimate(?) "Which Soldering Iron" Thread

[Agent24]

Warning - Long post alert! For the TL;DR people, here's my question:

Which (de)soldering devices are known to remove capacitors easily & thus properly, even on boards with large power\ground planes?

Can anyone give some examples?


For everyone else, please keep reading. You'll may find this post interesting!

I am still not very happy with either of my soldering irons in terms of ground\power planes on multilayer boards. I honestly don't think they are up to the task and I believe will only increase chances of me damaging things. Thus I need opinions (but preferably facts) on something to buy that will actually work.

At the moment I've got three irons: Two Scope MH25s - (25 watts) and also a Duratech Hakko 936 clone - (Claiming 50 watts).

(Interestingly to note, user "Neo2_000" was of the opinion that even a real Hakko 936 wasn't suitable)


So my quest was to see if I could find anyone on the forum that actually stated that "IronXX of BrandYY is perfect" - I didn't find a lot (even though I read practically every thread in this section of the forum!) but I turned up some interesting stuff.

The results thus far:


1) Ersa i-CON2 (http://www.ersa.com/art-i-con2-with-...-347-2138.html) series got good praise from user "Deckart" who said:

"Went for the Ersa kit.....Had a couple of Imac G5 boards to play around with,decided to desolder all caps and resolder new,I was blown away,suck,clean,new cap,solder,under an hour!.

What can i say,if you have the kit,know what you are doing,all the pain goes away.

Should have done this years ago!"

Now opinion on the forums suggests those G5 boards are one of the worst to work on, so if it makes the job as easy as this post makes it sound then that soldering station sounds pretty good!


2) Generic 60-80 watt irons also seem to get a good reputation from users PCBONEZ, Fizzycapola and kiddznet:

• I did the first few mobos I did with a 40 watt but later found a 60 watt was much easier to use and faster too. Frys Electronics has a decent basic 60 watt for like $10-$15. (Link)
• Without using the fancy air sucking solder gear what works best for me is: a 60 watt iron + rosined solder wick for 'off', use the wick before you pull the cap, then alternately heat the leads and 'walk' the cap out. (Link)
• With a 60watt iron. (any will do be it $1 or $700,000,000,000) You will not have trouble removing capacitors, using gravity or similar force but not much greater that normal gravity and melting the solder they will simply fall out. (Link)
• This bad boy 80W iron has them caps jumping off the board in fright Easy to put them back on with it as well gives a nice neat pro looking job. (Link)

Now that sounds pretty good, especially the part about "they will simply fall out." (my current irons do far from that!) Although, user "Krankshaft" seems to warn about these kinds of irons:

There is a common misconception about soldering iron wattage it has NOTHING to do with temperature which WILL delaminate a board.

The problem comes with unregulated irons they have the thermal recovery but they don't have temperature regulation and that is why they can destroy boards. They have a boatload of power but no control over it.

(Link)


Then, to add a little extra twist - User "Huckfinn" is of the opinion that quality matters more over wattage:

I found from trying many different units that in comparing one unit to another, you can find that a 60W rated unit is quite weak in performance while another unit rated at only 45W will work very well. This phenomenon would not make sense if you do not take into account the many other factors involved in making a really good tool for soldering/desoldering. The keys to really good units with impressive performance are a good heat path, precision temp regulation that is adjustable, and a heater element that can really pour on the power when needed with temp sensing feedback control without overshooting the set temp and delaminating or otherwise damaging the board you are working on. In this type of tool, there is no real good substitute for quality.

(Link)

(Perhaps this explains why my 25 Watt Scope and my 50 Watt Duratech seem about the same in performance!)


So in conclusion it seems a decent (and of course expensive) station or a high power generic iron seems to be what you need to get the job done, although the latter probably has a lot higher chance of damage if used wrong.

Assuming this makes sense (And I think it does) - what is a good iron?
I suppose I have already answered my own question, though.


I'm now a bit tempted to get a Standard 80 watt iron and just see what happens.

However I'd also be pretty happy to save up for an expensive soldering station if I know it's just going to plain work...


What does everyone else think?

[a23d56]

Re: My Ultimate(?) "Which Soldering Iron" Thread

I'm now a bit tempted to get a Standard 80 watt iron and just see what happens. What does everyone else think?

If you do big heavy boards you may as well put some money into good tools. But I'm only doing some regular consumer boards. My radio shack 40 watt iron and 45 watt desolder tool have worked so far.

BTW, I wrote in another thread that I used my iron and compressed air to blow out the holes. Worked good, but I got curious about the contents of the can. Seems most canned air is diflourethane, which is flammable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_duster

Probably not the best idea to blow that onto a hot iron tip. I doubt the can will explode in your face, but why risk it. OTOH, tetrafluoroethane, is advertised as "100% ozone safe, moisture-free, and non-flammable"

http://www.criticalcleaning.com/CCDusters.htm

I just ordered some from directron:

http://www.directron.com/152112226.html

Still, wikipedia says:

Contact of 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane with flames or hot surfaces in excess of 250 °C (482 °F) may cause vapor decomposition and the emission of toxic gases including hydrogen fluoride and carbonyl halides

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrafluoroethane

So if you use canned air and a hot iron, beware of the potential dangers.

[severach]

Re: My Ultimate(?) "Which Soldering Iron" Thread

I wouldn't go with the 80W iron right away. I used a Weller 8200 100/140 for a while. It worked, but with improved technique my current tools work much better. The problem isn't that your iron doesn't have enough heat. The problem is that the via, wire, and solder haven't enough cross sectional area to safely heat the ground planes no matter how much heat you have available. Increase the watts and though the work goes faster, the risk of burning traces increases also. Improve your technique and do much better work with less watts.

I've met boards harder than the G5. All boards bow to the SMD hot air gun. The hot air gun can safely raise the temperature of the surrounding area to a high temperature without risk to the traces. A low wattage iron easily melts the solder once the ground planes aren't taking the lion's share of the heat. Board solder varies widely. Some solder melts easily. Other solder won't melt until thrown into Mount Doom.

Money on a hot air gun is not wasted. You'll find a lot of uses for it.

Don't use compressed air to remove solder. It shoots off a lot of micro sized beads which go all over and short things out. Use a pin vice with the flat side of a 0.6mm or 0.8mm drill bit.

Tetrafluoroethane R-134a HFC-134a is a greenhouse gas. It doesn't damage the ozone. When the patent runs out, err I mean when saving the greenhouse comes into vogue it will be banned like the others. For now you can vent it to the atmosphere unless it's in an air conditioner system.

[Agent24]

Re: My Ultimate(?) "Which Soldering Iron" Thread

I thought the point of a higher powered iron was to heat the via quickly so as not to need to heat the surrounding plane?

It wouldn't surprise me if half my problems came from doing it wrong, although I have read the tutorials, and the advice people have given on here, followed it best I can and yet still have the problems.

I do have a hot air station but have not tried using it for capacitor removal - I thought it would just be a great way to overheat the board.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: My Ultimate(?) "Which Soldering Iron" Thread

Warning - Long post alert!

Oh geezz
Now my head hurts...

I thought the point of a higher powered iron was to heat the via quickly so as not to need to heat the surrounding plane?

Exactly.
- But, while true, that is a general statement and it's more complicated than simply looking at watts.
- Also the watts come into play AFTER you touch the work, not before.

First, what exactly does the manufacturer mean by watts in the headline of their ad. [or the big print on the box.]
- Electrical power consumption? -or- Heat output of the element?
I've seen it done both ways from the same manufacturer on different irons.
Different heaters have different efficiencies in converting electricity to heat.
And a station will consume power that doesn't go to the tip at all. [Did they include that power in the watts stated on the box?]

A higher watt rating -implies- not so much a higher temp, but a shorter recovery time.
[You heat iron to temp, touch work, heat leaves tip, tip temp drops. More watts -implies- the tip will get back to temp faster - which is the recovery time.
[Also a tip with less mass retains [stores] less heat which means not only it will cool faster but the heater will need more watts to maintain the tip temp once you touch the work.
[A wire wound heating element is slower to heat up than a ceramic element and thus even with the same max watt rating the ceramic tip will have a shorter recovery time and reheat the tip faster.
[[[Those last 3 things with "[" in front considered together is why cheap irons with wire wound elements tend to have big fat tips and irons like the Hakkos with ceramic elements can use less massive tips. - The extra mass is to compensate for a slow recovery time.
- If you couple a light weight tip with a wire-wound iron you've given yourself the double screwed whammy. No mass in tip + slow recovery time.
- With a massy tip on a ceramic heated iron you'd have a double bonus whammy. Problem is finding a tip that fits and isn't too big on the business end.
[Hakko tips 'look' rather light weight but that thick tubular area right over the heater adds a lot of heat storage mass.]

Another thing is you need to be a clean freak at the work site and the tip. [I dunno if you are or not, just sayin' for GP.]
It doesn't take much contamination to make things more difficult.

.

[Agent24]

Re: My Ultimate(?) "Which Soldering Iron" Thread

What you just said makes a lot of sense, some of it I already knew (like the total power consumption vs heater output) - I think my own Duratech is rated 60 watts from the mains but claims 50 watts on the heater - although if that is power draw or output, who knows!?

Remembering Willawake's tutorial emphasizing on the need for a large tip, I did buy myself the bigger sized chisel tips for my station, they helped, but not as much as I had hoped.

I'm probably a bit paranoid but I still have misgivings about the quality if my station, since it's not a genuine Hakko - the heater looks like a ceramic one, but maybe they got a normal one and just encapsulated it... someone else here though said Duratech\Duratool were pretty nice, really...



Interesting you brought up the point about keeping things clean - I was actually reading a good article a few days ago which said exactly that, not cleaning things before desoldering can make a lot of difference - and to be honest that may well be an issue.

I definitely do keep my tips clean, but as for actually cleaning the joint etc, not so much.

Adding more solder\flux is about all I usually do. I've never actually done it any other way and since it works on the easy single layer boards I guess I'm just used to it that way. I suppose with the heavier stuff you do need to be more careful.

Funnily enough, in Dick Smith's Funway 2 book (from which I learned soldering) he wrote:

"They say there are three rules to be observed when soldering. They are: (i) Cleanliness, (ii) Cleanliness and (iii) Cleanliness."

I guess I would do well to remember that!


So my next question then, what should be done in the way of cleaning before recapping a motherboard?


PS: I wish I could just visit one of you guys who do it all the time and see for myself how you do it, but I'm in the wrong country!