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How can you manage to damage a soldering iron like this?

cstanton

image

My first thought is, perhaps it's corrosion, from high or excess heat, these are disposable parts after all, but what really contributes to this kind of wear, and is there anything that can be done to prevent it being so sudden or so soon?

 

Often I find the soldering tips in the workstation to be bent, or the end of the tip looking like it's snapped off.

 

What're your thoughts?

How long do tips last for you or how often do you replace them?

What do you use to take care of your soldering iron?

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  • in reply to clem57

    Hi!

    I don't think they do (much) in normal design-engineer use. They might in production use (factory floor), but I don't recall it being frequent (the first place i worked, there was some soldering work done by hand even in production, for the very low volumes products, but the rest was automated - they had wave soldering machines, they made in-house, because the production quantities were still relatively low, in the hundreds or low thousands rather than ten thousands).

    Even fairly small (1mm across the flat portion) tips have lasted me 6+ years, which is getting toward normal wear&tear, i.e. I may knock the iron once or twice during 6 years anyway.

    Basically, since I upgraded my soldering station (more than 6 years ago) I've never purchased any more tips for it.

    The ultra pointy tips probably are more delicate, i.e. if bashed against something end-on while hot, might not survive - not sure : (

    But then even fine pointy steel tweezers can be ruined with soldering iron level heat (need re-quenching).

    As Doug mentions, the temperature probably plays a key role too, i.e. if the iron has good temperature control loop, and also if it auto-reduces temperature when idle, then that could help.

    Non-temperature-regulated irons did have low tip life I think, but I can't tell if that was due to my bad use of them or not. But those irons are so cheap, other things go wrong with those.. elements for instance.

  • in reply to shabaz

    Here's a customer action photo of my irons.

     

    The top one is unregulated, bought when I was at school (I guess '83). It's only be used with leaded solder. Has seen a lot of use.

    The lower one is 2 years old, regulated. I use it with unleaded solder - 350-380 °C. Also seen a lot of use.

     

    image

    My very first iron, an Archer, suffered from tip damage (there was a hole eaten into that one - that actually happened very fast image). Since then I never had structural damage to an iron.