Re: Soldering irons: made in America but designed in Russia?

... and wherever in the world I happened to be, there were always those Weller stations. Antex? Never seen it, never heard of it. Strange, ain't it?

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Regards, Joerg

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EDSYN are lovely irons but none of them list for under $100 and I believe they all have temperature regulation.

Apologies if I wasn't clear but EDSYN wasn't what I had in mind when I said "An ordinary soldering iron in the US with unregulated temperature". I mean the cheaper end of the market but not as cheap the rock-bottom $5 irons!

Ahm, what? See below.

Tell me, where's that ugly side-screw on this one?

Regarding your comment above, last time I checked $54.86 was still less than $100 ...

Oh, and no temperature regulation :-)

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Regards, Joerg

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How about the Weller irons like the SP23? I have owned one or more at a time from the early '70s. The tip is threaded into the heating element and it retails for under $20. I bought a new one last year after the threads finally corroded out of the element after 35 years of use. I only use the non regulated irons to make cables, or for antique electronics. For modern ESD sensitive equipment I used the Edsyn Loner series and had three irons on my bench, one with a .015" tip in a reducing collet.

I also have the 175 watt version that does use a set screw to hold the tip.

25 watt:

175 watt:

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You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!

Good point Joerg. I missed that one in the online catalogue.

You may be misunderstanding me if you think I said ALL basic American soldering irons look Russian. I meant to say there was a lot more of this sort of poor design in the US than in western Europe. A single item doesn't really prove or disprove it.

However. as you kindly drew my attention to EDSYN then I show illustrate the Antexes I mentioned.

Consumer goods are cheaper in the US, so the usual $1 = £1 is probably a good indicator of the sort of price level these irons are at. It's the sub $20 market (including tax).

Well, there are tons of them that look sleek and modern. Visit a good hardware store over here and see for yourself. Or any major Radio Shack.

Antex may be good but they seem to have the same problem as Ersa (I loved their irons while in Europe): International marketing may be lacking.

Well, check this one out, under $10, no side screw, the tip is threaded and that screws in as a whole from the front (IIRC):

If I'd need a simple iron I'd got for a good name brand, like this one for $40:

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Regards, Joerg

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Now, you ARE trolling.

See ya! Rich

The weller irons were once the best money could buy - then they got took over by cooper tools, since then the bean counters reduced the thickness of the iron plating so the bit oxidises in the barrel, "freezing" in and impossible to remove without damaging the element.

Years ago I bought a new weller - the stat lasted nearly 2 weeks before welding closed, they sent me a replacement FOC which lasted nearly a month before also welding closed - unfortunately I was away from my bench at the time and it burned out the element, I've been using Antex irons ever since, they usually last at least 5 years as long as the bit is replaced at the proper interval and I can buy at least a 30 year supply of Antex irons for just the weller (not including transformer base) iron.

I'd only use weller again if it was free (and I was allowed to keep an Antex on standby for when the weller packs up).

Strange. I've suggested the Weller WES51 with the PES51 pencil to many clients and then they bought oodles of those. Never a problem, in years, and this stuff is cranking at least 10h/day. Ok, they don't light cigarettes anymore like people use to with the older Wellers because smoking is no longer allowed in US businesses.

Last year in December I bought a WES51 also here for the lab, to have a spare. But I started using it a lot because the tiny PES51 pencil lays much nicer in the hand than the fat LR-20 of the older stations. They also added a nice feature, not important to me but to companies and the fire marshall: If the iron isn't moved in an hour or so it automatically shuts down. Grand total of $92 plus tax, with pencil and one tip, not a bad deal at all.

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Regards, Joerg

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I've got this one. Works perfectly - the only issue I've run into is having to know the melting point temps. Other than that I love it.

Maybe they learned from the mass exodus of customers and fixed the non existent reliability since the last time I had the misfortune to pay good money for one of their products, but once bitten twice shy, I'm not giving them any more of my money.

Unless it's a weld shop and the boss is a smoker. It is private property, after all. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

The same reason I'll never buy another NiMH battery or CFL light.

Cheers! Rich

It was the same for me, for a few years. Then I tried another batch of CFL because CostCo had them for less than a buck a piece. Philips Marathon, and they last and last and last. Of course I'd never buy a CFL at boutique pricing since that's just not worth it.

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Regards, Joerg

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Regardless of brand I still find the light quality is not as advertised - a

20W CFL does NOT produce the same light as a 100W incandescent.

Its difficult for me to make a life expectancy comparison as I had surge limiting NTC thermistors mounted in the switch plates, this prolonged the life of incandescent bulbs by an impressive margin - certainly much longer than some of the first electronic CFLs to hit the market.

At least in Europe, the filament lamp equivalance is completely misleading. (It's comparing against a softone bulb, which has a painted coating to give a lower colour temperature, and almost no one uses those, and they're much less efficient than the commonly used filament lamps.)

In the UK, just use a 4:1 ratio, so 100W replacement will be a

25W CFL. You can get away with slightly less (e.g. 23W) if the CFL has an exposed tube (no outer bulb) with well-spaced limbs (minimum self-shadowing), but this also implies significantly more bulky than the lamp it replaced, and it might not fit.

Generally, 18W CFLs here are marked as 100W equivalent, and it's very clear to anyone who's tried them that they don't come close. For those just trying CFLs for the first time, it gives a very poor first impression, which in many cases is also the last impression.

In the case of CFL reflector lamps, the ratio to use needs reducing to 3:1 or even 2:1 for small ones. (A CFL light source is particularly inappropriate for use in small reflector lamps.)

In countries with different mains voltage, the ratio may need adjusting, as filament lamp efficiency varies with the design voltage. (The most efficient voltage to design a 100W lamp is about 55V, given a reasonable life requirement, and as you move the design voltage away from 55V in either direction, the lamp efficiency drops.)

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Andrew Gabriel
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Interesting. I can see it dropping due to conduction losses when the voltage gets too low (so that the wire gets too fat) but what's the mechanism for the drop-off at high voltages?

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Designing a full range of filament lamps to operate over a wide range of voltages is a challenge rather like trying to solve a set of simultaneous equations when there aren't enough variables, so you end up with compromises, such as lower efficiency.

To make a 240V filament, you need a very long thin wire. It has far too much surface area to get to the 2700K operating temperature without radiating 100W away at a lower temperature. The way 240V filament lamps are made to work is to double coil the filament, so that much of the filament is radiating heat back onto itself, and the effective surface area for radiating heat away from the filament is significantly less than the filament's real surface area. This isn't as effective as using an optimum thickness filament in the first place, i.e. you have just the right surface area to radiate

100W when it's reached 2700K, and you still have a larger surface area for filament evaporation and thinning.

And yes, you're right about heat loss by conduction down the lead-in wires becoming increasingly significant at low voltages/high currents. With longer fragile filaments, the loss from the ends is proportionally less, but you may also require filament supports, which are additional routes to lose heat, and you lose more by convection to the gas-fill.

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Andrew Gabriel
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Most 120V tungsten lamps use a coiled coil filament as well, as do some lower voltage lamps.

A major issue with long thin filaments is convective loss to the fill gas. If you eliminate the fill gas and use a vacuum instead to solve this problem, you greatly increase the evaporation rate of the tungsten; out of the frying pan and into the fire.