Metcal: lost their minds

Try looking on Digikey's web site. They sell the tips.

Gets you that catologue

Cool. Thanks. I couldn't find that on their web site.

The SP200 series doesn't include fork tips for desoldering surface-mount stuff, so I figure I can buy some wide chisel tips and dremel them into forks.

John

Try someone that actually sells the things directly, rather than the manufacturer? I have no idea if Metcal sells retail direct, but most don't. You perhaps don't regard yourself as retail, but unless you have a salesdroid at Metcal to call, retail would be faster.

Not an exhaustive search:

On Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:28:20 -0800 in sci.electronics.design, John Larkin wrote,

I assume the tips are plated. If you dremel them, the areas without plating would deteriorate rapidly.

That's OK, I wouldn't use a desoldering tip often. But Metcal does recommend sanding them down to bare iron and retinning as a way of reconditioning tips.

John

Try HMC Electronics:

I've ordered tips for my MX-500P from them a couple of years ago. I recently ordered tips directly from OK International. Got them in a couple of days. I did not see any SP tips in their web store. You can check the OK web store at:

Try

You are pretty silly, john.

You do not call philips when you want HV capacitors. You call a distributor.

Try the part mags/sites you get some of your parts through, or simply ask one of those suppliers that you use.

They are about $40 each. Cheaper if you buy like a ten pack or such. I am sure that certain supplier partners have better prices. They could be as cheap as $15 each nowadays. I do not know. The specialized ones do get expensive.

AFAIK one does not buy directly from the manufacturer.

Think "Newark" or "OK industries", "Digi-Key", etc.

The other hint is to select "Where to buy" on the google search result that I saw, which was listing the metcal links. That gave me a region page, which led directly to the distributor list.

Yes, with copper substrate or other easily degraded when hot metal.

The metcal material choice is a pretty good one. It will not likely degrade quickly. What it will likely do is exhibit a lack of capacity to be tinned.

Surface mount devices should never be placed or removed (unless discarding) by this dual pad heating all at once method.

Multi-layer capacitors in particular get damaged by such stupid behavior that some assembly ditzy bitch came up with and has actually handed down as a valid procedural behavior in the industry. It is not.

Solder removal with vacuum tools so that the amount of solder that needs to be reflowed to remove the part is as small as possible. That means no 'wet' solder bead on the solder tip either.

Also the tendency is to use the hot tips as tweezers upon the part, which damages terminations. Hand soldering expertise goes a bit deeper than the level most are at. Many of those over-simplify the art and science of it as well. There are even those that think they know all about the process, that have yet to perform the process themselves.

On a sunny day (Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:28:20 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

That destroys the plating no?

David Harmon wrote in news:NLadnY3EpLWxFcPWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

I saw a guy modify an old (Weller?) iron that took 6-32 screw-in tips; he made his own surface mount tips with copper from a copper pipe and a 6-

I desolder with just the conical tip. The trick is to have enough thermal mass of solder on the two side and a fast action with the iron back and forth between the two sides. It junks the part but that is ok on resistors.

For things with many legs I use the heater that warms the board and the magic desoldering metal. It is slow but never harms the PCB material even doing a very big TQFP.

In the machined notch, sure. I'd only use this tip for a few minutes per year, just to remove surfmount resistors and caps.

Metcal says their tips can be sanded down to bare iron and retinned, so possibly the tip is solid iron. In that case, dremeling would do no harm. If it's just iron plating, well, I'd lose the tinning in the dremeled notch, which is fine by me.

John

I do that, but it's a nuisance and doesn't work for some geometries, like a lot of copper or a via that's stealing heat. A fork tip would be great, to desolder both sides at once.

John

Finally it dawns... AlwaysWrong works for the government :-( ...Jim Thompson

Are the PS 900 tips interchangeable with the SP200? I plugged in a few model numbers for SP200 tips into the OK web store search and nothing came up.

On a sunny day (Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:39:37 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

That just gave me an idea, I have some worn out Weller tips, I may just saw one of, and drill a hole in it to make a hollow tip. These old tips also fit in my newer temp controlled Voltcraft soldering iron.

er

Yes but which one(s) pay him?

I really hope he works for the other side.