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Well Because apparently you all like this kind of stuff now so I wanted to steer you all clear of the cold heat soldering Iron. I bought mine to desolder and resolder blown motherboard capacitors. I liked the cordless Idea of it and I wanted something to stick in the tool bag when I go onsite. As you never know when the problem is just a loose wire to a PCB. Man was I mistaken the tip is a form of fragile carbon...Nay more fragle then carbon as pencils dont break this easy. So im testing it out on a Mobo with some blown caps (see other article) it took me 10 minutes to heat the solder joints up enough to remove the first cap usually that is 1-2 seconds. I guess the motherboard was wicking away the heat too fast fot the soder to melt. So I have since relegated that I wasted 20 bucks ( sure wasent the first time ) and that this thing is not for my porpose ( but atleast it is easy to reshape the tip as it just needs a fine grit sandpaper or a needle file ( I didnt want to pay 15 for another tip so I just filed out the chip I put in the current one. But it is decent for soldering small gauge wire together just dont expect to solder anything larger then 18AWG it just wont do it.

I took one to work and tried to desolder some BNCs deep inside a test stand. It never really got hot enough to desolder the center conductor, but it did get hot enough to soften the plastic around the Cold Heat's tip! The tip started to bend over and loosen while the solder still wasn't flowing properly.

Using it at home, it works fine for soldering small connections, but takes a long time to heat anything connected to a ground plane or of heavy gauge.

If you are working on ICs, especially SMTs, you need to be careful not to contact adjacent pins as the iron works by conducting current through the parts that bridge the gap in the tip.

I had the same experience. The physics of it is interesting, but it's not very useful.

So I guess nothing beats a Portasol. For field work they are an amazing tool but rather large. Still it handles large and small stuff with ease and come with heat shrink tubing tool to boot. Just be careful which way you set it down or you'll burn a spot on the desk.

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