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Re: Soldering heating problem

 

I used the same irons off and on for at least a decade.? I'd just grab one of my trusted ones from the storage box and go at it. Over the years, I did notice that it was becoming more difficult to solder plus it was taking much longer for the iron to heat up. This seemed to happen to all of the ones in the box.? Then, last year, I had a situation where I absolutely needed to solder 10/12 ga wire to some XT60 connectors.? I had no luck with any of my irons in the storage box, then brought out my two "Radio Shack" guns, one around 120W and the other 240W.? Neither of those would do the job either and I was dumbfounded as that particular soldering job should have been cake.? I decided to try watching some Youtube vids on soldering to the XT60's.? One of the best videos showed a simple 60W iron being used successfully.? Hard to believe for me, but I ordered a similar iron last year (the one I shared the link for in prior post).? Within minutes of its arrival, and to my surprise, my first 10 ga to XT60 soldering was completed.? This iron also heats fast and had molten solder tip in about 30 seconds.? My box irons all took about 3-5 mins to get to the proper heating.? I've gone on to use this 60 watt iron for more complicated jobs with one of the most difficult being to solder BNC females to a "cookie tin" chassis.? Difficult for sure, but I'd never have been able to do the job with any existing iron.? One of the guns did help on that job too (the 120 W gun).

I suppose one way to truly check your situation would be to beg/ borrow an auto battery and feed a true sine wave inverter with it, plug in your iron and see if you still have issues.? Or maybe just temporarily use your car battery, with the car running of course, while you test your irons.?? I've been able to easily do some outdoor soldering with my 60 W iron and my 400 watt auto inverter (and no, that's one's not true sine wave.... I suggested the true type to eliminate any possibility of error or improper iron function).

Jon

On 7/18/21 11:27 AM, Robert D. Bowers wrote:
VERY possible. If they're not sending out a pure sine wave, that indicates a really bad problem on their end - for instance RMS measurements would be way off. Also most places have 240vac going in, and if the ground/neutral isn't solidly connected all the way, you can get really weird problems (like motors running noisy or hot, and so on). We had that problem and blew light bulbs until it was found and fixed - one leg was high, the other too low a voltage.

I find it strange that soldering irons aren't lasting. When I was in business (industrial electronics repair), I soldered all the time. I'd go through tips on a regular basis, but the rest of the iron kept going - a cheap iron, well, I've got one that I've had for many years (admittedly, I didn't use it on a daily basis and haven't used it in some time). I used a propane iron in the field, and did go through those rather regularly, maybe once every couple of years. I think that you might be onto something because of how quickly they go bad - a bad waveform could possibly do that. If the peak voltage was high, but the actual area under the curve (overall) being low, it could wear out the elements but not get hot enough. I've seen something similar to that in the past (on a plasma cutter/torch).

I'd be real interested in seeing the waveform.

Right now I'm using a temperature controlled iron from Radio Shack - purchased in 2012. I had to replace the iron itself because of bad internal connections once (I suspect factory defect), but other than that, no problem. I have a small 15w pencil iron, and my old 150(?) watt monster (very old and I've had it for several decades - great for coax connectors and ground plane connections).

Bob
N4FBZ
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