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goal for 2023: use a conical solder tip and enjoy it

Jan Cumps

You have to challenge your habits. I have always soldered with chisel and sloped/bevel round tips.
Many irons come with a conical tip. A lot of people solder happily with it.

image

I have several, to use with an iron that I like. But I don't like soldering with the conical tips. I am not good at it.
That's going to change this year. I'm going to try and always use these tips when appropriate, and learn to love them.
The real goal is to become better at soldering with the conical versions than I am now with chisel and sloped types. And to enjoy the adaption path.

I'll keep you posted.

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  • I'm such a newbie at this that I didn't know the difference Laughing

    Given that you and   both talk about not being good with conical, I think I should probably switch to the chisel tip!
    To be honest, I don't even know what tip is on there right now Grinning... but I think it's a small conical I put on there for some fine detail soldering I was doing a while back.

    Do you have a recommendation for "easiest to use" tip? 

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    Hi Nico!

    I reckon part of it is whatever we grew up with, ends up being the one we are most comfortable with. In the UK, most of the soldering irons available to consumers were manufactured by Antex, and they always came with the bevel (sloped) tip, and that's the shape I still use 99% of the time. Antex nowadays focuses on soldering irons for craft work I think - they didn't evolve their irons/tips much.

    The tip I use most often has the dimensions below, i.e. 1mm tip, for most through-hole work and also SMD work. I should increase the size for through-hole work, but the modern soldering irons are so good at supplying power when needed, that I usually don't swap to a larger tip, except when soldering large connectors.

    image

  • in reply to shabaz
    shabaz said:
    I reckon part of it is whatever we grew up with, ends up being the one we are most comfortable with. In the UK, most of the soldering irons available to consumers were manufactured by Antex, and they always came with the bevel (sloped) tip,

    Customer action photo:

    image

    I used this one from my high school days until I switched to leadfree.

  • in reply to shabaz

    I just checked… it’s a conical tip, and I have a super fine conical one lying next to the stand.

    And I have NO idea where the rest of the tips are!  

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    Hehe at least you got a choice : ) I didn't know of any other styles growing up, other than bevel. All the instructions taught everyone to use this style of tip:

    image

    This is from the children's Ladybird book (PDF link) by Rev. Dobbs who passed away a few years ago (he was quite famous in amateur radio circles in the UK).

Reply Children
  • in reply to shabaz

    I started with whatever was in the old used soldering iron I picked up at a garage sale, the tip was irregular with chunks missing  Laughing

    actually, that’s not entirely true - I think the first iron I used was in a wood burning kit, but that was long before i did any soldering.

    i found the other tips though! The plastic pouch they are in was tucked up against the side of the organizer and I must’ve looked past them at least three times!
    it didn’t contain any bevel tips Face palm after all that searching. But I switched tips with the weller corded iron, which I think might be a tiny bit beveled.. I’ll have to use it and clean the solder off it more to see clearly.

  • in reply to shabaz

    I've never seen the ladybird book, but the technique of building on a wooden baseboard, with brass screws was exactly how I was taught at school radio club back in the early 1960s

    Neil

  • in reply to neilk
    neilk said:
    but the technique of building on a wooden baseboard, with brass screws was exactly how I was taught at school radio club back in the early 1960s

    Same here, in the early 80s. Except that the screws were nails, in a matrix.