Fantastic New Soldering Iron

The "Stanz" helping hands thing with aligator clips?

Dollar Tree has book lights with a big plastic clip at one end of a gooseneck light. Pull off the light, secure the gooseneck to a plastic chopping board, and the plastic clip sticking up at the end does a good job with more flexibility and reach. Plastic jaws don't scratch, and are non-conductive. You can make one with as many hands as you need on any size chopping board.

I have a shower but no bathtub. The shower is made from painted sheet steel, as in a school gym locker room. It's almost as good a ground as the average cast iron bathtub. I actually have done some soldering in the shower while building an LED water temperature thermometer. However, my Weller TC201 iron did not get very wet. Note that the Weller runs on 24VAC and is transformer isolated from the 117VAC main power.

In the past, I designed marine radios. Field tests and environment oven tests were regular events. There were times when literally everything, including me, were wet. I made it habit of carrying 12V soldering irons.

You probably haven't had a hot air gun inhale some loose steel wool. The Nichrome acted something like a common fuse and sprayed metal everywhere. My guess is about 75% steel and 25% NiCr.

Are you sure? As I recall, the base of the tip is hollow. Into the tip fits a ceramic rod that goes into the barrel of the iron and connects to the heating element and temperature sensor. Unless I'm missing something, there's an electrical connection from the tip, through the barrel sleeve, through the nut, through a metal tube, and into the handle of the iron. I have no clue where it goes from there.

I carry an AC line tester with me on service calls: It's amazing how many miswired AC power strips, home made extension cords, and broken protective ground pins I find. I recently did an impromptu inspection of a friends house and garage workshop, and found a few wiring problems. He thanked me and asked if I had tested my own hose. I hadn't. So I went home and found 2 outlets that I had miswired. Oops.

I don't know what is inside the iron as a heater and am guessing that it's a NiCr wire heater. It might be a ceramic heating element (NiCr wire encapsulated in MgO (magnesium oxide) ceramic) which is safer.

Trust, but verify. I just checked my ancient Weller TC202 soldering iron and base with an ohmmeter. About 700 ohms from tip to protective ground pin. The tip isn't grounded by design: According to the specs, the tip voltage to gnd is less than 2mv: Ground? What ground?

That's why I like a tip with a resistor to ground. The resistor drains any static charge, but eliminates the fireworks light show should the tip hit a power bus.

Done. See my comments up 2 paragraphs.

I haven't had the mechanical thermostat fail on my Weller. The contacts might need to be cleaned every few years, but everything else seems to hold together. However, when Weller switched to an all solid state controller, things were quite different. After my 3rd failure, I gave up on the soldering iron. Sorry, I forgot the model number.

Again, they don't care if the device works or doesn't work as long as it doesn't kill the user or torch the laboratory.

I think he was talking about the one that looks amazingly like actual hands complete with polished nails. Might be Japanese from one of those sex doll factories.

On a sunny day (Mon, 07 Dec 2020 13:37:43 -0500) it happened legg wrote in :

OK, well for the hobbyist who needs to solder some connectors and things like that it is probably a good deal. But any directly on the mains iron would keep me away from my electrostatic sensitive semiconductors. What do they mean by 'ceramic core induction technology'? For that money buy one and take it apart ?

did you mean vice? ;)

I didn't see any actual solder involved.

My Metcal is wonderful. Tips last forever. Temperature control is excellent and there's lots of heat when you need it. It somehow knows to shut off when you aren't using it, and reheats in a few seconds. Worth it.

The Metcal MFR-1100 series is around USD$400 (~CAD$540), compared to CDN $21.99 for the KLARYTYMA.

The KLARYTYMA is newer, has LCD temperature display, temperature adjust, PID controller and on/off switch, all contained in the handle. It does the same things as the Metcal for about 1/25 the price.

Why buy a Metcal?

Have you used it much? Do you have any trouble with the temperature setting getting changed as you handle the iron? I have an iron with a similar control and it is often changed when I didn't intend it.

Check internal snubber and controller ground path, if any.

Pray it goes together again.

RL

The temperature control is fairly stiff and takes a deliberate effort to change. It is also well away from the hand or fingers when you hold the iron as a pencil and the LCD display is visible.

Even if you hold the iron as a knife when chopping vegetables, your palm is still well away from the temperature adjust control, so I don't see how it could be accidentally changed.

Assuming you are in the US, you can order the MINGQ version for USD $29.99. It appears very similar if not identical:

Another similar version is available for USD$23.99:

Soldering irons do not inhale steel wool.

My KLARYTYMA measures 0.7 ohms from the tip to the big round pin on the AC plug. The test leads measure 0.3 ohms, so the iron is 0.7 - 0.3 = 0.4 ohms. If you want a higher resistance, it would be easy to make a small adapter with a resistor of the desired value in series with line ground. Then you wouldn't get so many sparks if you accidentally hit the line voltage. The resistor would have to be capable of withstanding the full line voltage.

You still have to unplug the circuit under test when you want to work on it. You could put an additional resistor between the circuit ground and line ground so the circuit would remain grounded when unplugged.

They shut off because there is a pair of huge neodymium magnets in the stand, which presumably saturates the alloy in the tip. Older Metcal stands for the same tips did not have the magnets. When I bought an additional, new one, the shutoff feature annoyed me because whilst it heats up fast, I was used to not waiting at all. I removed the magnets and like it better that way.

Metcal would replace (under some sort of guarantee) any tips that stop heating unless the plating is damaged or there are visible pliers-marks on the shaft. At a previous workplace we sent off a couple of batches of dead ones and they replaced them apart from a couple that someone used pliers on. I wonder if this was turning out to be a significant expense for them leading to the addition of the magnets.

There are also non-Metcal tips available. I guess some patent ran out. They seem fine.

IME it's the hand pieces that go--the contacts get intermittent. DeOxit helps some.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Just checked mine. No magnets, but it does shut off if it's not used. Must be some other mechanism.

Your review reads like a plant. Soldering irons in this price range are very suspect. Check this one out (be sure to read the 1 star ratings):