Bench Soldering Equipment / Tools Suggestions

[Sonik Wiz]

Oh krap, I've been soldering electronics with lead for many decades - are you saying I'm losing my mind for different reasons? [Don't answer that.]

Ah, the smell of rosin core in the morning gives one the feel.... of victory!

I notice that @zdjh22 is such an expert on this he even lives in Leadville!!

 

[zdjh22]

Ah, the smell of rosin core in the morning gives one the feel.... of victory!

I notice that @zdjh22 is such an expert on this he even lives in Leadville!!

I was wondering who might notice .

I can also tell boring old man stories of why this town is called Leadville. And tales of the famous mining town just up Fremont Pass in what used to be the town of Climax, Colorado.

 

[barfle]

go for a couple of 100W ones if you can afford it....if not pick up a half dozen of the 50W ones instead and wire them up for 4/8/ and 16 ohm configurations....

The ones they have for sale are listed as 50W, or 100W with a heatsink. I have heatsinks.

 

[barfle]

Time-tested may be wrong.

The EPA banned tin-lead solder and requires solders with higher melting points. This means a hotter iron.

I boight a couple of rolls of tin-lead solder from Amazon about six weeks ago. Apparently it’s not banned.

But then, I live in Idaho.

 

[barfle]

One other tool worth considering is a lugger, especially if you’re going to be working on automotive stuff. I’d say 80% of the loom connections are terminated in lugs, and trusting pliers to do a good job is unwise. And don’t be satisfied with the ones that you just squeeze until your voice changes. Get one that ratchets while it’s closing and won’t release until it’s fully crimped.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

I was wondering who might notice .

I can also tell boring old man stories of why this town is called Leadville. And tales of the famous mining town just up Fremont Pass in what used to be the town of Climax, Colorado.

I am vaguely aware that part of CO was home to a lot of silver mining. In that regard I have a large amount of silver/lead fine gauge solder on hand. Has worked out well over the years.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

If you are going to work on ampleflyers you need to come up with a (preferably non inductive) load resistor.
You will want something capacious so it doesn't over heat in five seconds if you are testing amps at high power.
https://www.surplussales.com/Resistors/NonInductive/Res-NonInd_list.htm

Great link thanks! Fair Radio, Meshna, ETCO, great names and this one seems just as much fun to prowl through.

 

[mandrix]

Aren't (I'm asking) non inductive resistors mean the windings around the core are in opposite directions? Way out of school, here, me.

 

[mandrix]

Definitely. Those fumes are just flux smoke, though, but they are still to be avoided. In my prior life I used to deposit thin films of various metals including lead to make superconducting tunnel junctions. I have a vapor pressure table for lead somewhere in my library, but as I recall at the low temperatures you use for soldering lead alloys there is no danger (tin-lead eutectics melt at a much lower T than either tin or lead, and I had to use higher than melting point temperatures for depositing films).

If you want even more boring stories about lead, I can tell you about the hazards of lead plating out from radon gas, or our use of ancient lead from Phoenician shipwrecks as shielding on a dark matter search experiment.

It sounds as though you have been involved with some very interesting stuff. My regards. I love science.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Aren't (I'm asking) non inductive resistors mean the windings around the core are in opposite directions? Way out of school, here, me.

Yes. And same for non inductive film capacitors.

 

[mandrix]

Well I think hole flow exemplifies my bank account...when I buy music it goes in the reverse direction. Nah, prolly just my overactive imagination.

 

[bsco]

You and me both. I didn’t use an air filter near a solder station for a couple of decades of electronics work. But I think all of the acetone I used for years with bare hands to clean glassware and the silica fumes from glasswork with a hydrogen flame on quartz (fused silica) were probably far worse for me.

After years of using chemicals during my electronics repair career, my hands are always cracking up due to excessive dry skin...sometimes I have to coat my hands in vasaline and wear latex gloves to soften up the skin.....back in the 70's there was no such thing as health and safety..also did a lot of copier repair and they used liquid toner back then....

 

[bsco]

The ones they have for sale are listed as 50W, or 100W with a heatsink. I have heatsinks.

you will get away with over driving them for very brief periods....you can also add a cooling fan to the setup to keep keep them cool...

 

[zdjh22]

Aren't (I'm asking) non inductive resistors mean the windings around the core are in opposite directions? Way out of school, here, me.

Yes, such as the following. But I think most of the non-inductive power resistors I used were ceramic, and some were carbon.

 

[zdjh22]

It sounds as though you have been involved with some very interesting stuff. My regards. I love science.

It was a fun career, starting with low T physics at Illinois (John Bardeen included!), working on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (a dedicated 2.5m telescope in NM with a 54-CCD imaging camera), about 15 years working on a dark matter experiment 2300’ below the surface in an iron mine in northern Minnesota, and a couple of decades of building huge tightly coupled Linux clusters for number crunching.

But, sadly, I somehow missed out on quad and MCH music until this past year! Thank goodness for QQ.

 

[barfle]

Aren't (I'm asking) non inductive resistors mean the windings around the core are in opposite directions? Way out of school, here, me.

Could be that, could also be that the resistive element is formed as a flat or cylindrical blob. Not all resistors are wire-wound.

 

[barfle]

After years of using chemicals during my electronics repair career, my hands are always cracking up due to excessive dry skin...sometimes I have to coat my hands in vasaline and wear latex gloves to soften up the skin.....back in the 70's there was no such thing as health and safety..also did a lot of copier repair and they used liquid toner back then....

I remember using a “vapor degreaser” at Hughes. It was a tank about 3’ square and 4’ high, with about 8” of trichloroethane in the bottom. To use it, the trichlor was heated to boiling and the sides of the tank were cooled to catch the vapor. You put your circuit board in the vapors and they condensed on the board and dissolved the flux, which drained off and back into the pool at the bottom. You always got distilled solvent on the board. But it was hell on your hands. I used a lot of corn-huskers’ lotion in those days.

 

[mandrix]

I worked at a facility where all the circuit boards were dipped/coated/sprayed (don't remember the process) in some sort of plastic substance. I handled thousands of them but don't know as any of it was harmful.

 

[relaxing]

And the ban on lead in solder is probably why there are reliability problems with newly manufactured electronics, much more so than there were in years gone by. A separate waste stream for lead containing things probably would have been a better strategy. The lead was put there in the first place for a reason.

Nonsense. The reliability problems are due to cheap parts and bad (cheap) designs. We’re now 2 decades in and the concerns about bad joints and whiskering have not materialized.

The lead was put there for its low melting point. All your consumer electronics is soldered by robot ovens that don’t mind working 100 degrees hotter.

We do need better e-waste handling. Even without lead there’s plenty other nasty stuff in there.

 

[relaxing]

That said. as a hobbyist there’s not much advantage to working lead-free, unless you’re selling your makings in Europe. Wash your hands before you eat and you’ll be fine.

If you do want to work without lead, get one of the newer tin alloys like SN1000C that wet and flow more nicely. An adjustable temperature iron is a must-have either way.