Sharpen and Re-tin Soldering Iron Tips

After grinding a nice new point you have ruined your tip.

Tom

I figured that out after I attempted it the first time... Hey, it was going in the garbage anyway.

Other folks have mentioned that they do it, but I don't see where they talk about HOW they do it.

I assume that the anatomy of the tip is a copper plated chunk of something? Once you grind the copper off, your done?

Thanks,

John

Cheap tips are solid copper, and steadily dissolve in the solder, as they are used. This usually shows up as a pit at the tip, where they are most exposed to fresh solder. These can be reshaped a few times with a single cut file.

Good tips are made of iron plated copper. When the iron is fresh, it is solder coated, probably by first coating the tip with high temperature silver solder. As long as you don't let the solder get burnt off and the underlying iron oxidized, these tips last a great many hours, because iron is hardly soluble in solder at the operating temperature of the iron.

If the iron does get exposed, and is resistant to solder wetting, you might be able to restore the bond by rubbing it on brown craft paper (a folded paper bag) in a puddle of solder with active rosin flux. Anything much more abrasive than that is hard on the iron plating.

This type should always be put away with a fresh, heavy coating of solder, that can be wiped thin, the next time the iron is used. If the iron plating ever gets a hole in it, the copper dissolves out from under the rest of the plating.

I think you're confusing old tips with new.

They used to be made of copper, and then you'd have to file them occasionally as the tips decayed, so you'd get a smooth tip.

But even when I was a kid, 35 years ago, it was pretty common that the tips were plated with something, so they didn't corrode nearly as fast. Actually, I've used nothing but plated soldering iron tips since aobut 1974, and I don't recall once having one go bad. That might be a slight exaggeration, but the plated tips live on forever, and the only ones I can remember that I needed to replace had been damaged when I dropped them, or otherwise misused them.

A practical example. One time I did want to do something out of the ordinary, so I bent and filed a plated tip. So the plating was gone, and once it was, the lifetime was pretty finite. It was likely a good experience, since if the long life of the plated tips didn't say anything to me, getting the plating off and seeing the decay did.

So if a tip is plated, you never take a file or steel wool to them. Generally, they will only require a wiping with a sponge or paper towel, though of course the tip needs to be in the iron and turned on at the time. It will generally just wipe away. Then of course, you need to "tin" the iron again, which means adding a fair amount of solder, and letting it sit for a few minutes before wiping it clean.

ANd of course, if you don't tin the tip in the first place, again letting it warm up and then melting solder on it so it covers the tip and then letting it sit there for a few minutes before wiping the tip, you won't have great success using the iron. The solder will just roll off.

Michael

Many tips are iron plated copper. Grind off the iron and it's junk.

But "Ironclad" sounds so much more secure. ;-)

I've got copper tips that I've filed and re-tinned for years. I've never had to do that to an ironclad tip, but a Weller is significantly more than $9.95. ;-) And new tips for my $9.95 RS iron are about 39 cents. :-)

And I got a little tub of this stuff some decades ago:

Cheers! Rich

Rich Grise wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@example.net:

That cheap, eh?

I'll probably buy one or two on my next visit, then. It'd be worth having a second tip around if this one starts to give me trouble.

Puckdropper

On 16 Feb 2007 11:01:05 -0800, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com Gave us:

IF it is solid copper, no problem.

Problem is that NO soldering iron tips these days for circuit assembly are solid copper. They are usually steel with a cladding on them. As soon as you grind or sand on it, you kill the tip as bare steel will NOT take solder.

Look for and use an item known as:

Kester "sal ammoniac"

TINNING BLOCK.

About 2 to 5 dollars. A block in a box about 2.5 inches on each side. Mine has lasted me a couple of decades.

You shove your hot tip (sounds nasty) into it and it removes crust and the like, and allows the solder to re-tin the tip quite well.

On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:44:06 -0500, John Popelish Gave us:

Wouldn't that more correctly be "Copper plated Iron"?

On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 20:25:23 GMT, "Homer J Simpson" Gave us:

COPPER PLATED IRON!

Actually, the CLADDING is NOT copper, but another more durable medium.

Lead is very grabby at surface molecules. Copper is very weak on its surface, and is easily degraded by such metals as Lead (solder) or Mercury, etc.

Sheesh!

No, it's ironclad copper. The copper is for thermal conductivity, and the iron keeps the copper from being eroded by the solder. An ironclad tip will last long enough to be worth its price if you don't do anything to break the iron coating.

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 06:09:48 -0500, "Stephen J. Rush" Gave us:

That's not what MetCal or Edsyn uses. Iron or steel is the base metal, and the "thermal conduction" rate is unimportant at the heat source level. The difference being a mere second or two laggy-er. Whoopie.

The tinning block I mentioned restore ALL of my tips to like new.

The trick is MOT to have your temp cranked through the ceiling, and turn OFF your iron EVERY time, when not in use.

Teaching my production crews this fact saved our company some bucks, and taught some ordinary assemblers a tid bit that improves their capacity to become better. more experienced assemblers.