multiplebaboons wrote on 2025-07-31, 21:32:
Makes sense. What about a semi-decent cheap iron?
I spent like 20 minutes browsing soldering irons and soldering stations on Amazon, but I don't think I saw anything I can recommend as "semi-decent" below 50€/50$. You need at least 30W to 40W power at 300°C to not get the problems you are facing with your current iron. I own one of those ultra-cheap "60W" chinesium irons, and I am sure I would have struggled desoldering any pin connected to a bigger plane with that thing, possibly you have a similar iron. Actually, that iron belongs to a friend, and I bought that one as replacement because his old equally cheap 15W iron broke down while I was using it. That iron is not his only iron, and this is for a good reason. I am not at all convinced of the quality of that thing. While it might be a good thing for heat transfer that the changable tip is directly pressed to the ceramic heating element, the whole construction looks flimsy, brittle and delicate, and I am afraid this thing breaks easily. While browsing Amazon, likely 30% to 50% of the cheap irons use that construction. They are advertised as "having a powerful ceramic heating element heating the tip directly", and often they point out "4 holes for efficient cooling", while I have no idea why you even would want cooling. Maybe the idea is that only the tip is supposed to get hot, but not the handle, so you need some cooling.
Furthermore, the supposed 60W is kind-of a lie. You don't actually want an iron that permanently draws 60W, because it will get too hot, and burn flux, solder and PCB unless you are continously soldering stuff to ground planes. Any 60W iron you want to use for electronics soldering needs to reduce the power when it is at operating temperature. There are two ways to do that, though: The cheap one is a "PTC heating element". This kind of heating element is made from a material that gets hogher resistance when it get warm, so while it might take 60W at room temperature, it will drop to something like 15W at 350°C. The sensible way to drop power when the iron is hot is actually measuring the tip temperature and electronically regulating the heating power to keep the temperature. The cheap irons with digital temperature display might have an element that does not reduce power by itself when it gets hot, and use electronics to drop the power if required (and automatically increase the power when it is required, like soldering thick wires or ground planes). Do not assume that the cheapest irons with a temperature dial actually have a regulator. The "60W" iron I know has a dial (and you need a magnifying glass to read the scale of that dial), but all it seems to do is reducing overall power of the iron, like if you would use a dimmer. The temperatures printed at the dial might in fact be the equilibrium temperature the iron reaches after a couple of minutes at that settings if you don't solder anything.
So, what you should have:
- Kind of durable build quality. You don't want something that breaks the third time you try to use it. Reject products with 10% 1-star reviews indicating "bad quality", "broke after 3 month", "already broken as deliverd" and the like.
- 25W to 35W unregulated (and no PTC heater!) or a higher power with regulation. The friend I bought the "60W" iron as replacement for also has an unregulated 30W iron I use whenever I know that I require some power. That iron gets too hot if left continously on and soldering just IC pins to small traces. I use that iron at a switchable power outlet, and manually turn off the iron for one or two connections when I notice it gets too hot. That's why I can't recommend unregulated irons above 35W unless you are experienced enough to recognize whether the temperature is too high or too low by looking at the way the solder flows while soldering and manually pulsing the iron.
- Not just a pointy tip. The heat needs to flow through the tip, and small pointy tips are so thin that they do not conduct heat very well. Tips like that are perfectly suited to solder SMD ICs to small traces, but soldering an electrolytic cap on a Pentium II mainboard that has both pins connected to power planes on the mainboard with a small pointy tip is impossible, even if the iron goes up to 450°C at the heater and could deliver up to 60W. You want a chisel-type tip as well for the purchase to make sense.
I'm afraid I didn't find anything that matches these criteria at a "cheap" price. Possibly someone else can chime in with a recommendation in the 40-60$ range, if that price is acceptable for you at all. I suspect there are suitable products at that price point, but finding them without knowing some model/vendor names to look for is very difficult. Also, some Amazon reviews I read indicated counterfeit products imitating semi-decent brands, while being lowest quality, so watch out for "insanely cheap offers". Those offers are likely not real.
