On Wednesday 02 April 2025 10:30:03 pm wn4isx via groups.io wrote:
An informative review can be found at
Looks very impressive.
It does. But although they mention a $26 price in there, the links to buy one are at $40 or so.
And what's with the default to conical tips in so many cases? I notice in that review that they mention "chisel" and "bevel" as being the ones they found most useful, and I tend to favor a chisel tip myself, where you can use a corner, an edge, or a flat to control how much heat goes into what you're trying to solder. I can't see a way to do that with a conical tip.
My bench iron at this point is the kind where you can screw a heating element into an edison socket in the handle, and screw various tips on to the heating element. I have a few assorted heating elements, and a couple of different handles. One of those was purchased at Radio Shack, and the rubber where you grip it has gone wonky, typical of their products. I think the original brand was Ungar, but I think they got bought out by Weller? My favored tip is a PL-113 (iron plated). So a while back I wandered into a Radio Shack store (when we still had some around) looking for a new heating element, or something, and they no longer carried that kind of an iron. What they did have was every single iron in the store had a conical tip on it, which I didn't want. I ended up ordering one online from someplace, temperature controlled and a 3-wire cord so the tip is grounded, which my older iron ain't. I haven't used it a whole lot, and am not overly confident in its ability to handle this PL-259 I need to solder here. I'll probably break out my Weller gun to deal with that one...
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
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Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
