this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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Good soldering gear already makes me wince. I couldn't imagine paying $500+ for an oscilloscope.
Fortunately I'm more interested in the software side of things... thank God nobody charges for programming toolchains anymore.
Can you recommend any good soldering gear for an intermediate level? I've done plenty of soldering over the years but have always used crappy low end products. It's always been a struggle to properly do a clean-true solder (not just heating the solder like I see everywhere) even though I try to meticulously maintain my equipment. I'm hoping that it's just the equipment I use and a higher end one will make things a breeze like I see the professional's use.
It's really a pain in my ass. On top of maintaining the equipment I have whole setups I've constructed to hold wires and equipment snugly so I can properly apply heat. I purchased a high temp kit but it's cheap as well and still sometimes run into the same problem, with the smaller components and projects though I'm afraid to use it and overheat something that can't handle it.
I'm not really the right guy to ask - I don't have that much soldering experience, and I'm a broke college student - but I've found the Pinecil to be Pretty Goodโข for my use case of "occasionally soldering things to microcontrollers."
It accepts power over USB-C, so no need for a bulky (and expensive) base station like a Hakko or Weller. (You do need an AC adapter capable of pushing 65W PD, but if you're into electronics you probably already have something like that just lying around.) Proper temperature control is also nice compared to the cheap "plug and go" irons.
YMMV, I upgraded to it from a Home Depot butane iron (yes it was as bad as it sounds) so...
Pinecil works OK for small things, but struggles on larger joints because of it's low power and small thermal mass. Personally, I'd prefer one of the many Hakko/Weller clones for a cheap solution.
Thermal mass is a valid concern, but the v2 can pull 100w from an appropriatly beefy usb-c adapter, and 200w+ from one on the new usb-pd spec (testing is ongoing for that though)
My tips for solder gear are
1 I taught a bunch of elementary kids how to solder. We only had water sponges and within minutes nobody could solder right. I had one brass sponge and it made instant difference. Now the tip could actually conduct heat properly. It is seriously an unexpected total game changer.
As for the brand... Whatever Sparkfun or Adafruit is selling is legit but more budget friendly. I took a look and Sparkfun has some good options from Weller.
I got a Weller WS81. It's been good except the first wand didn't like too much side pressure (user error really). Otherwise it's been totally solid for years. They cost a lot less when I got it. Yikes. Get the cheaper WE1010 or the other red one.
An Aoyue might be ok. My Aoyue hot air rework station has been solid for the past several years assembling several hundred boards.
Hope this helps
PS as an experiment I once tried using a dollar store soldering iron... Cheap POS. No temp control. As long as I used a brass sponge it was easy to use.
Weller makes great gear that just lasts
I would totally recommend a good precision pencil-style iron. They are somewhat expensive (400$ to 600$), but super nice and easy to use. All the power supply and control electronics is in the base, making the actual iron super light and easy to use, furthermore the hot part is tiny, so it's much easier to avoid touching it when doing fine work. Despite the small size of the hot end, they do very well on large parts, and are able to heat up instantly.
Same. I'm lucky for software to be my hobby/career. It's practically free. Contrary to popular misconception, it doesn't require any kind of special or more powerful hardware (for most dev, at least). Maybe $150 for a second monitor, for sanity, but that's not actually necessary.
...I mean, I do have good hardware too, but that's for my gaming hobby, not my software hobby.
To be fair, if C++ or Rust is your thing... let's just say I'd have a Threadripper if they weren't five grand.
I once had to (repeatedly) compile a C++ codebase on some Lenovo shitbook. It ended up being so infuriating (thirty seconds, minimum) that I wrote a few load-bearing shell scripts to
rsynceverything to my desktop, build it, and copy the binary back... which was ultimately about five times faster.Man, I wish I could have just used MicroPython for that project.