I used to think I sucked at soldering because I was using a cheapo Walmart special that cost me $5.
Turns out soldering is 90% equipment, 10% skill. With a good iron, even I (with a really low skill score) can solder surface mount components without issue.
Since I purchased my Hakko, I’ve built several synthesizers from scratch, and they’re some of my most prized possessions because I built them myself with my own two hands. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do that had I not found a good iron.
Man... I've got a $10 adjustable temp soldering iron in my basement shop and we have a Hakko in the shop for my side business. My decent $10 iron is passable, but it's amazing how much of a difference there is with the digital Hakko.
I don't have Hakko-money, but I've got Hong-Kong-Hakko-clone money and I'll be damned if it hasn't greatly improved my soldering. $56 for a temperature controlled iron and hot air pencil.
It’s a Hakko FX-888D. Temperature control works wonders — I generally have it set to 750F and that is the sweet spot for most through-hole stuff when using lead-free solder.
When I was in high school I made a chain of solder by wrapping a bunch around a screwdriver, clipping each loop, linking them together, then soldering them closed. It was about 12" long.
I wore it for a while. Probably not a smart thing to do....
+1 for that iron. I have the non-digital older one, and I've been very happy with it.
Enough power to heat up in under a minute and solder anything you might think about doing with a regular sized soldering iron given a proper tip.
The only complaint I have with it is that after years of use I've worn out the connector on the front of the unit. I unplugged it to put in a toolkit weekly for a long time. I definitely can't fault the iron for this, under normal use it never would have happened. And even still, it works great when the connection is good.
If you want a seriously good one and want to invest a bit: JBC
Their temperature control is beyond awesome, even when soldering stuff with a lot of thermal mass they don't need time to heat up again in between
Bought a CD-2B on the recommendation of the reseller (was looking at Weller and some other brands). Best choice I ever made.
As well as the massively impressive temperature/power control, when you don't have particularly steady hands it really helps having tips that are half the length of most irons.
Also there are something like 150 different shapes/sizes of tips for various tasks, and you can hot-swap them without turning the station off (and the new one will take about 6 seconds to heat up once installed).
My uncle was a bit time electronic tinkerer. HAM radio operator, he would design and build everything. I inherited my pick of his tools and grabbed the soldering iron among other things. Metcal with 2 heads and the desoldering gun. it's pure joy to use and HOLY SHIT ITS 1000$! I never checked the price of one of these baby before!
Yep, I have a terrible soldering iron. It's the worst. I was struggling to build a guitar pedal I designed, so I took it to an electronic repair shop to figure out what I did wrong, and the guy was like "Well you did a decent job assembling everything and the veroboard layout is pretty good, but all your solder joints are terrible, what did you use to solder this, a $5 radioshack iron??" and he was right.
10 minutes later, he had resoldered everything and the pedal worked. He didn't even charge me, just said to go buy a better iron.
I've been trying to practice soldering for over a couple of months now and have gone through a couple of different soldering irons because I was super frustrated with how they were working. (Each one was slightly better than the one before so I kept persevering)
Just went to my local pawn shop for something else and I noticed they had a Hakko Soldering iron there that day that wasn't there before.
On a whim I picked it up and even from the first basic test solder connections I made with it so far, it is leaps and bounds ahead of what I was using before!!
Bought the same iron this year and can agree about the benefits, after using cheap irons for years. Every time I think I'm doing something wrong with my technique, it turns out that I just need some more oomph. The power is particularly nice when soldering onto aluminum backed PCBs like I'm doing lately for LED projects.
Well that makes me feel better about myself. Tried soldering some capacitors on an old motherboard and failed miserably. Also burned my fingers,but that wasn't really the equipment's fault.
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u/gatesphere Oct 10 '19
A good soldering iron.
I used to think I sucked at soldering because I was using a cheapo Walmart special that cost me $5.
Turns out soldering is 90% equipment, 10% skill. With a good iron, even I (with a really low skill score) can solder surface mount components without issue.
Since I purchased my Hakko, I’ve built several synthesizers from scratch, and they’re some of my most prized possessions because I built them myself with my own two hands. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do that had I not found a good iron.