Best Soldering Irons and Stations

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I would start by deciding the power source (AC, DC, batteries, or flammable gas) and the style of soldering tool (pencil, station, or gun.) Then I would pick the tip I want (T12, T15, T18, etc.)

My high school Electronics Technicians took second in the state last year. For repairing electronics and soldering small wires, the first rule is to run away screaming from any tip that is not a T12 / T15 / T18. The second rule is to buy a station and a lot of tips according to your budget.

We can use old 900M / T18 tips, but they are less than ideal. On the up side, they are cheap. Pencil-type irons can be had for $14, and tips cost less than $12 for a 17-piece set on Amazon.

I love T12 tips, but they do cost money. $35 for a station and another $35 for 10 assorted tips is not easy for some high school kids to afford.

T15 tips are down to $20 each, and soldering stations are down to $200. I have not blown that much on one station, yet.
 
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ElectronsRecycled said:
I would start by deciding the power source (AC, DC, batteries, or flammable gas) and the style of soldering tool (pencil, station, or gun.)
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For an entry-level setup, is there really a good reason for the typical person to consider anything other than A/C?

I have a Weller pencil-type, but I got it without a base and then bought a cheap base as an afterthought. I wish I'd spent a little more and gotten the whole kit from Weller.

That said, I do almost zero soldering. The most ambitious thing I might do is replace the microswitches in my Logitech trackball, someday. Those switches wear out way too fast.
 
I used a Weller station for years repairing pagers ages ago. Best station I can think of. I use a butane one now from my toolbox but again, I don’t do any soldering anymore.
 
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Still enjoying my Hakko FX888D. While there are higher end units with better performance, in terms of long term costs, it is one of the best value units. The main reason for this, is the cheap replacement tips, and the wide selection.

In its price range, there are units that will warm up faster,but they will not have as much thermal mass, thus forcing you to compensate by using a higher temperature than otherwise needed.

Beyond that, there is the thermal interface quality. For example, you can find similarly priced units that can do a higher output power, but if you connect them to a kill a watt meter and then tap a blob of solder on the tip, to a heatsink, you will see that they will often top out at like 30-40 watts. Even if the hardware can deliver the power, if the heating element doesn't have good contact with the tip, then the heating element will spend all of its time in thermal protection mode.

The FX888D does have some of the issue to some extent since the ceramic heating element doesn't maintain perfect contact, it is able to consistently dump a lot more of its power into the solder tip without doing thermal protection of the heating element.

The most efficient ones, are the tips like on the Hakko FX951, but it is a far more expensive unit, and the added efficienct is often not needed unless you are dealing with large ground planes, and want to do things like keep the solder tip at like 250C for your lead solder.
 
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MoxNix said:
These are very far from "the best" they're cheap junk. For simple soldering stations you really can't beat Weller. Sure they're more expensive but not excessively so and they're far better. Your so called "professional" rework station is a joke. If you want to see an actual professional rework station take a look Pace products. https://paceworldwide.com/product-catalog/rework-systems
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I would second the comment from MoxNix . I am a veteran 44th year as CET.
Pace stations are priced way over the Hobbyiest bench budget.
Les Pounder should rename the article 'Best Soldering Stations Tools for those on a low budget'.
I have 2 Pace MBT stations and the SensaTemp feature allows a faster workflow.
I also have several Tip Temperature testers and the pace thermal control is very good
My MetCal station is the best and many Professionals that I have spoken with, agree.
I was a first week adopter of the Pinecil V2 paying far far too much to import the $25 tool
and on the third remote task using XT60 Lithium 4S battery power,
the $25 tool went dark, unresponsive,
and I reverted to the Weller PyroPen Gas Iron as my Service Truck backup.
Edit2: MetCal just lowered the price of the GT90 with T4 wand to $250 US and I may buy it soon.
 
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One of the most important aspects of a soldering iron for me is to have a soldering iron hot enough to do the job. Nothing is worse than holding the iron to the board or the wires I want to join and not being able to melt the solder on the part or wire. It also needs to be able to HOLD the temperature long enough to finish the work. I have a very cheap 60-watt iron station with a nice sharp tip with a variable temperature power supply that I usually have on high all the time. It's hot enough to do what I need it to do and keeps the temperature up when having a lot of solder to melt (for wires :) Looking at Amazon's pages, it is sometimes hard to tell what the power of the iron is so be careful. 60 Watts is the minimum that I would recommend.
I agree with the folks that say these are simply hobbyist tools. At HP I saw a LOT of companies soldering stations and they were all high-end equipment, esp for surface mount. When ISO 2000 came in like a tsunami, most stations had calibration stickers to ensure that the soldering irons were accurate.
BTW, I tried to use my IR temperature measurement gun to see what my iron's temperature was and it failed as the gun could not focus that small :)
 
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I guess we are not all professionals who need to solder all day. I'm an academic and when my techs are busy I have half a desk in my office where I can put small projects together. I had an old and VERY cheap soldering iron which, nevertheless had temperature control and a temp display on it. It was terrible. I replaced it with a Hakko FX888D. I now have no bouts of frustration and stress when trying to solder components to boards, I no longer destroy components with a cheap soldering iron which was either too cool or far, far too hot (despite claiming it was between 390 and 400 degrees all the time), and I can make lovely neat connections. I'm not really sure what the extra $2000 dollars buys you for those 'real professional' set-ups, but for an occasional user the Hakko is just light years better than cheap stuff. I didn't understand just how much of a difference $100 (or a bit more) could make.
 
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Use Metcal if you are going to do a lot of soldering. When I worked for a pcb manufacturing firm, they were the goto irons. The heating element is inside the tip and, the base automatically adjusts the power according to the heat being drawn from the tip. No manual adjustment needed and no risk of accidentally leaving the temperature set too high and ruining something by overheating. They have changed a bit since I was doing that job but, would still be my choice, if I was doing enough soldering to justify the cost.
 
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I have a 10yr old Hakko I use at my workbench and a 5yr old Milwaukee cordless I use when on jobsites. The Milwaukee's a bit clutzy but it shares the batteries and chargers with my M12/18 tools and is multi-positional, so getting into narrow, uncomfortable places (ceiling soffits!) is quite feasible.
 
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The first iron, the Pencil V2 is no longer available on Amazon less than 3 days after this article is posted. Can you please edit the article and either post the proper replacement or remove it totally as it's no longer relevant.
 
sundragon said:
The first iron, the Pencil V2 is no longer available on Amazon less than 3 days after this article is posted. Can you please edit the article and either post the proper replacement or remove it totally as it's no longer relevant.
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While it may not be available from Amazon, it IS available elsewhere.
pine64.com

PINECIL – Smart Mini Portable Soldering Iron (Version 2) - PINE STORE

A smart and affordable soldering iron running on a RISC-V SoC and featuring an open-source firmware. Portable and powerful, $25.99
pine64.com pine64.com
 
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I heap scorn upon your lack of JBC and the many decent and reasonably priced clones that are available, especially if you're doing microsoldering nothing beats a JBC T115
 
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