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Reviving an oxidized tip

neuromodulator

I recently forgot to turn off the soldering station and ended up leaving it on on at 380 °C for around 12 hours. The tip ended up very oxidized and unable to get tin to stick to it. I looked for information on how to "revive" the tip and found a video about it from Androkavo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JADI1N-K9Yc. I tried everything shown there except the sandpaper, the steel wool, the knife and the tip tinner. After a lot of effort, I managed to get a bit of the surface with a more silvery look, but It still could not get solder to stick to the tip. As a last resource I decided to try electrolysis, which I know is quite effective in removing rust, but I was not able to find any info on how good or bad of an idea is to do it with a soldering tip. I left the tip submerged into a beaker with tap water and electrolyzed it for around 5 minutes. After removing it from the bath its color barely changed, so I didn't expect much, but when I tried to put solder into it, tin began to stick into it.

It is unclear to me whether electrolysis caused any damage to the soldering tip, so I do not recommend using this method unless you are willing to take the risk or have more knowledge about chemistry than I do.

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  • I use polish bar and tip activator- both discussed here. Only when needed. I'm running 5 years on the same tip now and it's still going strong.

    image image

  • in reply to Jan Cumps

    The stuff in the round can at the bottom was also called "tip tinner" and was sold by many brands. If the tip's melted solder stops flowing evenly on it or if there are places on the tip where molten solder just will no longer flow over, then this stuff works pretty well generally. I've never used the polish bar and I would agree that if you need to remove serious oxidation or other gunk on the tip, it's probably time for a new one. Replacement tips just aren't that expensive generally. I pay about US $3 to $5 per tip depending on the size and model. 

    There are exceptions such as a replacement tip for my American Beauty 250 watt and 350 watt irons where a new replacement tip is about $50 to $100. I mostly use these giant soldering irons for steel cans with lids for a hermetic seal, mostly for military products I manufacture. The steel first gets a copper flash (very light plating), followed by Nickel, then bright tin electroplating to make them solderable. 

    The lesson here is that you should plug your iron into a variac if it doesn't have a temperature adjust setting. By turning down the variac voltage when the iron is just standing by, you can keep the tip from getting unnecessary damage due to oxidation. Even when in normal use, I usually set the variac to about 100 VAC instead of 120 V unless I need maximum heat transfer. For standby or idle setting, I would use about 60 to 80 VAC. This way, the delta-T is short for bringing the tip back up to the desired soldering temp and tip damage is kept to a minimum despite the iron being plugged in for many hours at-a-time.

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  • in reply to Jan Cumps

    The stuff in the round can at the bottom was also called "tip tinner" and was sold by many brands. If the tip's melted solder stops flowing evenly on it or if there are places on the tip where molten solder just will no longer flow over, then this stuff works pretty well generally. I've never used the polish bar and I would agree that if you need to remove serious oxidation or other gunk on the tip, it's probably time for a new one. Replacement tips just aren't that expensive generally. I pay about US $3 to $5 per tip depending on the size and model. 

    There are exceptions such as a replacement tip for my American Beauty 250 watt and 350 watt irons where a new replacement tip is about $50 to $100. I mostly use these giant soldering irons for steel cans with lids for a hermetic seal, mostly for military products I manufacture. The steel first gets a copper flash (very light plating), followed by Nickel, then bright tin electroplating to make them solderable. 

    The lesson here is that you should plug your iron into a variac if it doesn't have a temperature adjust setting. By turning down the variac voltage when the iron is just standing by, you can keep the tip from getting unnecessary damage due to oxidation. Even when in normal use, I usually set the variac to about 100 VAC instead of 120 V unless I need maximum heat transfer. For standby or idle setting, I would use about 60 to 80 VAC. This way, the delta-T is short for bringing the tip back up to the desired soldering temp and tip damage is kept to a minimum despite the iron being plugged in for many hours at-a-time.

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