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gringopig

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BeardyAndy

Thought i'd give this a bump for you as i'd be interested to hear the latest whats hot (pun absolutely intended )

gringopig

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roberty

How much soldering do you intend to do? I got a soldering station from Aldi for £20, done loads of leads and a few fuzz dog kits with it. Someone on eBay sells replacement tips for about £2 a throw

gringopig

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thermionic

I would recommend a Hakko station, but most people probably don’t want to spend that much. There are cheapo Chinese stations sold under various names for £40-60 that seem to do a decent job. Maplins used to sell them but I don’t know where you’d get one now. Failing that, a 25W Antex mains iron is what I used for years. Ground wires to the back of pots was just about within its capabilities (but only just).

gringopig

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roberty

gringopig said:

Is it temperature controlled? I wonder if it's worth paying out more for this.

I see the Aldi soldering station but it looks to be out of stock. Good price too. What would be a minimum wattage to solder earth connections on pots?

there's a few buttons on it, standby is 200 degrees and max is 400 degrees, these are the only two settings I use really can't comment on the others

robinbowes

Another Hakko vote - I got the grey one, not the blue/yellow. Nice piece of kit.

R.

Modulus_Amps

Hakko all the way for me too. The tips on mine last forever... .   Well much longer than any pencil iron you can buy

sixstringsupplies

Another vote for Hakko here - bit again I use it several hours every day.

before the Hakko I used an Atten, it got used for several hours every day but died out after a good solid 12 months or so. It’s less than half price of the Hakko. 

Philtre

Hakkoo FX-888D

TheMarlin

I’ve got a nice Hakko, but may also pick one of these up. https://www.aldi.co.uk/gas-powered-mini-soldering-torch-kit/p/052152282742301

BeardyAndy

The Hakko seems to be getting a lot of love, I think i'll stick to my 2 iron system for now and start saving!

robinbowes

SILVER FX-888D:



Be careful where you buy from - there are many fakes on the market.

I bought from the official UK distributor, Dancap, who have recently been acquired by H K Wentworth Goup and can be found at https://www.hakko.co.uk

R.

Haych

I bought this one from Amazon:

Holife

Can't complain for the money, it's got me through most of an amp build and is still going strong.  

OilCityPickups

We still use a couple of the Maplin sourced temperature controlled solder stations ... though gawd knows where we can get spares these days. When these give out we'll probably replace them with stations with built in hot air guns for shrink tube. I'd stay clear of cheap solder stations and simply get a good 60w iron unless you intend to do lots of work. 

gringopig

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roberty

gringopig

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lasermonkey

For most of my working life (35+ years) I've used Weller TCP series irons and power supplies and they've been consistently good.

The only soldering irons I've liked more were the Metcal ones, which I used for a couple of years until I switched jobs. Yes, you could get through tips quickly if you weren't careful. We had that issue until the technical rep from Metcal advised us that the cleaning sponge should be nothing more than damp, and that fixed the problem. In fact, it's good advice for any soldering iron, as you don't want to be rapidly cooling a hot bit with a sodden sponge.