Recommend as soldering iron?

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Deadpool9

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I have some very small soldering to do. I am putting 28ga wire onto a very small pcb, and I have 4 of the wires very close together. On top of that, I have 4 led's to solder onto the other ends of the wires, and a lot of pins to solder on.
Can anyone tell me what would be a good soldering iron for the job? I can provide a picture of a part I disassembled if need be.
I was looking at the Little Dandy Soldering Irons, and some from Weller.
Would the Weller Pyropen work well? Im wondering if it wouldnt be easier if I used a torch type iron, so I wouldnt have to touch the wires. I have done a lot of soldering in the past, but I cant say it has looked all that great, plus I have never soldered anything this small before.
 
There's some good suggestions in this thread: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=794779

Basically for your needs you're gonna want some thing with a small tip. My suggestion would be to get either your basic iron witih replacible tips, or a soldering station. I have a 30w Weller iron and I just love it, you can replace tips, and also heating elements. In that thread theres mention of a cheap soldering station, one of those would be handy, but its not neccessary.
 
another hakko 936 vote here... it's awesome.

The Coldheat is OK for lots of things (it's fantastic for working under the dash of a car) but for the great majority of electronics work that I do, or any kind of SMT stuff, it's pretty much useless. But if you need to wire up some fans for a cheap price, why not?
 
It really depends on how much you want to spend... so what's your budget? If you want to get a really good iron that will last and be able to do just about anything you need in the future... go with the Hakko recommended. I think it plus a few tips cost what? 70-80$?

If you want to keep it to a budget of like 20$, goto radioshack and get the 15watt grounded iron. Might be a bit difficult to solder the 28gauge wire with it, and i'm not sure what type of replacable tips you can get with it, but it's great for electronics.
 
the company is paying for it, since it is their project. so around $100 or so is fine.
 
Ok I am very new to soldering, What I am trying to do is take off a bad burnt mb power connector from the board.

I have these questions, I plan to get a basic soldering iron, I saw soldering irons at microcenter from around $4.99 for the 30watt and $6.99 for the 60 watt.

What wattage do I need to be doing the removal and resoldering of a new mb power connector on the mb?

What does the manual desoldering pumps do versus a electric desoldering tool? I have seen them but don't know how one works or how to use one?

Any help would be grateful and I'm on a small budget if you want to know.
 
do NOT use anything over 10 watts on a PCB... it might well fry something.

Personally, I use a .8 watt soldering needle for Ics, and a 5 watt for anything else in the computer.
 
What store do you find that wattage of a soldering iron? I know the power standard is different in Europe, but come on what maybe a 10watt in Germany could be a 30watt over here. And I don't know what wattage your using Little Grabbi but the wattage here in the US is different.

Will Lowes, Homedepot, Sears or someone else local carry one? I am in a hurry to get this soldering done and move onto soldering something else.
 
Scorpionjwp: Watts are the same in any nation. Because of different voltage standards a 10W iron will be designed with a greater or lesser resistance to get those 10W of heat, but 10W is 10W no matter what country you're in. That's the great thing about international standards.

To answer your question about desoldering, there are a few different ways to do it. First is desoldering braid, which is copper braid that will wick up solder when you melt it with your iron. Then there's manual pumps, which are spingloaded tube things that you use to suck up melted solder, radioshack makes a good one for around $10 I think that has a bulb attached to a hollow tip which I have used extensively in my component scavenging. Then there are expensive desoldering tools with an electric pump which do the same thing as the radioshack one but are easier to use and surprisingly expensive. One more method which is a bit dodgy but comes in handy is melting the solder with your iron and spraying it with some compressed air. Works like a charm, but it's only suitable for component salvaging as it will coat parts of the board with solder drops.
 
if you have really small soldering to do you can get a needle point tip I believe.. the only draw back is it's harder to apply heat but with a good iron it shouldn't be hard.
 
Well that one part number for radioshack showed a soldering iron that my dad uses alot. Well that cleared up what wattage the iron we have is, it is a 15watt.

Well I was going toward the electric desoldering route, From the help of pherret I found a website named Jameco that carried a electric desoldering tool for $26.95

Thanks for your help guys.
 
Scorpionjwp said:
What store do you find that wattage of a soldering iron? I know the power standard is different in Europe, but come on what maybe a 10watt in Germany could be a 30watt over here. And I don't know what wattage your using Little Grabbi but the wattage here in the US is different.

Will Lowes, Homedepot, Sears or someone else local carry one? I am in a hurry to get this soldering done and move onto soldering something else.
Click to expand...

Correction: The Voltage in the US is differnet. I've got a spare 20watt lying around though, using that on 110vac would make it a 10 watt... want it?

And its not exactly probable for home depot to carry sub-10 watt needles. Try Circuit city.
 
Little Grabbi said:
Correction: The Voltage in the US is differnet. I've got a spare 20watt lying around though, using that on 110vac would make it a 10 watt... want it?

And its not exactly probable for home depot to carry sub-10 watt needles. Try Circuit city.
Click to expand...
a 220V, 20 watt iron will be a 5 watt iron on 110V. Good luck melting anything other than wax. :D
 
i would vote with the people above saying to get the hakko 936, it is very cheap and you can adjust the temp to do SMT work. i got mine for 50$ on sale
 
gee said:
a 220V, 20 watt iron will be a 5 watt iron on 110V. Good luck melting anything other than wax. :D
Click to expand...

um... I use a .8 watt for SMD work... its a bit tedious, but the risk of frying anthing is greatly reduced.
 
got it at frys, wasn't even an advertised sale. just walked in one day and was like "hey, a temp controlled iron for cheap" i didn't think it would be this nice. you can get it online for about 60$ or so. it is a GREAT iron for the money. or monkey. thats it, great iron for the monkey. it'll last you forever, and there are a lot of different tips you can get for it.
 
I have the Hakko 936 as well and it works quite well, has a good number of tips available, and isn't all that expensive.

Just make sure to buy the ESD safe version with a grounded tip so you don't accidentally zap stuff.
 
Little Grabbi said:
do NOT use anything over 10 watts on a PCB... it might well fry something.

Personally, I use a .8 watt soldering needle for Ics, and a 5 watt for anything else in the computer.
Click to expand...

WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Low wattage irons make it much easier to kill sensitive parts than a high wattage iron.

With a low wattage iron, it can take far too long to heat the joint to the point you can solder.

You want to heat the joint quickly so that you can solder the joint without heat soaking the part and the board.

If you use too low wattage of an iron, the heat dissapates into the part just as quickly as it is applied to the joint.

You want to get in & get out.

If you are serious about IC work, get a high-wattage thermally regulated iron.

I worked for a year at a company that populated PCB boards, there wasn't one iron on the manufacturing floor under 60W and they did plenty of SMT.

Most of the irons were Hakko or Metcal thermally regulated units.
 
I got myself a 25watt soldering iron, I looked again at my dad's soldering iron. It is a weller soldering iron, 40 watts and it just happens to be older than me, but we still use it.

Since I am getting into knowing how to solder, my father also purchased me a 40watt desoldering iron. He knows how to use the electric desoldering iron better than a manual pump one.
 
Little Grabbi said:
um... I use a .8 watt for SMD work... its a bit tedious, but the risk of frying anthing is greatly reduced.
Click to expand...
I use an 80 watt PACE surface mount rework station at work, and I do it on $5000 boards. Sometimes I even use my Hakko 936 on the same boards, if i'm only replacing a single 0805 part or something. Watts really mean jack shit, what matters more than anything is that your iron is regulated.

The risk of frying something goes down when you have good technique and practice, combined with the right tools. And by the latter, I mean simply having a decent temp-regulated soldering iron with a proper tip for the job, and a good supply of other necessities - flux, wick, and solders...
 
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