I have a special power

My touch robs solder of it's chemical properties and raises it's melting temperature to several thousand degrees. What are some practical applications for this ability? I see very few. So far the only results have been some singed wires and skin and some soldering irons smashed into pieces. Its definitely not as cool as flying.

Sorry ignore my bad jokes and sarcasm. Didn't mean to broadcast my frustration. Nothing gets my goat worse than inanimate objects. Taking deep breaths now...

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062721&numProdsPerPage=60

THE most important to successful soldering is, IMO, tinning the tip of your iron and keeping it tinned. This is the stuff I use. The old school way is to clean the tip with a fine file and melt solder on it.

the tip tinner stuff also lets me know when the iron is hot enough to use. If it won't melt the tinner/cleaner it won't melt the solder. And if your tip isn't properly tinned it won't melt American cheese.

How do I know this?

Yeah believe me I have flux, cleaning/tinning solution, wire sponge. Everything that was working perfectly a week ago is suddenly useless. Maybe my tip is just dead, seems like it should last longer than just a few hours of soldering. Anyway it's not useable now. I'd invest in a nice soldering station but I don't trust myself to keep it whole.

Is this a tip with a set type screw holding it in place? If so loosen the screw and tighten it back down. If the tip is the type that unscrews from the soldering iron do the same thing. I do this every time I pick up the iron. Before I plug it in of course.

Its all about heat transfer. Do what CT suggested. Then get a small sponge or damp paper towel folded up and wipe the tip between each connection soldered.

If the rosin is left on the tip it will eat away at it. Try and keep the tip silver.

Then when uou heat a connection only apply a small ammount to the tip. hest the connection and apply solder to the wires when they are hot enough to melt solder, not the tip of the iron.

Tin the wires whenever possible and dont let solder leak down past the insulation of the wire. If you screw up start over and heat sink leads and components so you dont melt them down and damage them needlessly.

depending on the iron, you may actually have a bad heater element.

touch the side of the barrel to a wet sponge and see if it generates steam immediately. If not, the element is probably bad. How do I know this?

I held a NASA soldering certification way back when, so I know soldering pretty well...and I always tell people if they solder relatively frequently (more than once a month) to invest in a good station, my preference being Weller...with a thermal control and a digital readout. It may look like a lot of $, buit if you use it often, it will pay for itself.

Be aware of the thermal and chemical properties of your solder; different temps and different fluxes do different things...rosin core, lead core, SN63, 60/40... newer solders are less lead bearing and can be a PITA to get to flow.

Also, keeping the tip clean is crucial if you are doing a lot of soldering, so wipe the tip off on the wet sponge every few joints and re-tin it.

The sponge on the side of your soldering iron is a good idea. Unfortunately I always inadvertently use my fingers. And yes you need to wipe your tip after each connection. I was doing some soldering last nite and realized that I always unconsciously loosen and tighten my tip before plugging the iron in. It's an old habit I forgot I'd been doing all these years.

It's kind of like first thing every morning I unconsciously scratch my,

wait,

nevermind.

Whatever happened to just spitting on the iron to see if it's hot enough? Sheez. Amateurs!

I quit using wet sponges a few years ago when I discovered the wonders of the little Hakko kitchen scrubber-looking thing. It's great for cleaning tips, doesn't scratch the tips like you'd think, and you don't have to let the tips reheat. I keep mine in an old coffee mug (I hate the goofy dome-shaped thing Hakko makes to hold them) and when I finish a spot, I dip the soldering tip in the mug against the wire ball and swirl it around a little. It keeps the tips clean, and when I'm finished soldering, I give it a quick swirl through the wire ball (I really need to learn what those are called - tip cleaners I think) and a dip in the tip tinner. Every so often I'll pull the cleaner ball out of the coffee mug, take it outside and smack it against the wall a few times (limestone rock) and dump out the bits of crap from the bottom of the coffee mug.

thop, look around for an inexpensive soldering station. You'll really save money in the long run if you do much soldering. I bought a Velleman adjustable unit for under $20 and they finally started making other tips for them. Four years into owning mine, I'm still using the tip that came with it, but I just bought two more different ones (one angled and one fine-point). I probably will have to replace the iron unit before the tips wear out. I used to go through tips like {censored} through a goose when I was using those stupid screw-in types from Rat Shack. They would wear down really fast. They started lasting a little longer when I bought the Hakko tip cleaner, but still, they wore out often.

Kat, where can we get these tip cleaners? Sounds like a good investment. I am thinking of moving up to a soldering station. I never thought I'd be doing this much, but my customers are now bringing their cheap guitars back for pup upgrades now that they play good. I guess I should be proud of my set up work, but I still think these guys/girls would be better off buying a better guitar if they don't want to even change their own strings.

I just Google "Hakko tip cleaner" and it comes up with a {censored}load of links. However, it includes links to the holder and ball together, which is overpriced crap when an old coffee mug does the trick. I did find this by Aoyue on Amazon that looks like it's basically the same thing, but at a much lower price. I've found the replacement scrubbies by Hakko all over the place online where electronics parts are sold. But... it's confession time: I also have used plain ol' dollar-store metal scrubbies made for cleaning pots and pans. They aren't as soft as the pretty gold Hakko ones, but as mentioned earlier, I'm still using the same tip that came with my soldering station iron four plus years ago, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. YMMV, of course, but I know you're daring like me and might just go with the 2/.99 scrubbers from the dollar store. If you can find the copper-looking ones, those are made of a slightly softer metal than the stainless steel ones I'm currently using.

I have a copper scrubber (like Kat described above) in an old soup can for use with my fixed power / no feedback soldering irons.

I just use the wet sponge on my good soldering station and keep the tip tinned with great results.