I was on my way to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin California, and I stopped at Barstow bought myself a soldering gun what you see in the picture in this post in the upper left-hand corner. That was 25 years ago. That soldering gun has been my only means of electronic repair, de-soldering, doodling, playing, Etc. The light bulb went out and I’ve never changed the tip. It's served me well but it's far from being a precision device.
With the advent of a recent er.. events of me discovering that I'm really an engineer, I realize that I deserve to have a better soldering solution. Remembering a video that I watched on YouTube, I went back to it and the person doing the video had suggested a soldering station.
So, I bought myself one. I paid way too much for shipping and the shipping took a week to get here from Oregon, but I couldn't be happier with my purchase. I feel like I was living in the dark ages before. The soldering gun that I use the tip was like three sixteenths of an inch across so you could easily solder together three points of an integrated circuit accidentally with that. There have been times where I needed precision with my soldering gun and I had used a nail clamped to it to make a point. I deserve an actual soldering station.
You wouldn't think something as simple as temperature control would be all that important but it is. The power conversion happens inside of a large transformer in the main box so you're able to get all that power in that main box but piped to a small tip. And having temperature control lets you get an idea of how it feels when you get into a rhythm. Solder will actually melt at 200 degrees Celsius but I found that I prefer run almost 275 degrees.
The soldering station that I got was a YiHua 936 from hobbyking.com which I bought off of eBay from their store.The price was only twenty bucks but after shipping I paid about 28.
When I got here I saw a turd for like an hour straight on several things that needed to be soldered.. with a big stupid grin. I left that typo in on purpose.
Get your own here:
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