Antex XS25 soldering tips.

Recently I ordered some spare XS25 tips from farnell, the one's that arrived are different to what I remember (and the illustration) they do not have the split down the sides and a retaining spring clip, instead the hole is oversize and packed with a springy strip of metal.

Normally I use white heatsink compound on these irons, when time comes to remove the tip they come off easy enough, just remove the spring clip and splay the split sides and the tip can be eased off with a gentle rocking motion.

Does anyone have experience of removing these new tips after a period of use?

Another Antex related question - anyone know why the TC50 tips have lower physical mass than XS25 tips?

TIA.

Reply to
ian field
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Yes. They are much much better than the split skirt type. I have recently had a couple of the original type seize to the shaft really badly, one so tight that I destroyed the iron trying to remove it. The new type use a cylinder of thin metal to interface between the tip metal, and the heater shaft, and this seems to give a nice smooth fit and easy removal later. My Antex irons are on 16 or so hours a day, and none of the tips of this new type that I have had on them, have shown the slightest signs of sticking. I was discussing this very thing with Dave P further down somewhere in a thread last week. "Rolling your own tip" I think it was. Did you notice also that these new style tips that Farnell are supplying, have a different plating material ? Looks like chrome or nickel chrome maybe. Some years ago, Antex bits were plated this way, before they went to the dull iron plating.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

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Is the shim metal plain curved sheet or does it have flats formed so polygonal in section ?

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

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Reply to
N_Cook

Hard to say. ISTR seeing flats on a brand new one, but I just slid one off - iron cold and nothing but firm fingers required ; try that with the old style - and it now looks pretty round. A simple cylinder of perhaps 1.2 turns.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

I started getting these a coulpe of years ago as they were for use with lead free solder, which is far more corrosive than ye olde solder 60/40 with lead. The lead free solder damaged normal iron bits apparently reducing their life significantly . I think they have more mass so they stay hot as unleaded solder requires more heat to melt. But we found lead free solder more trouble than it was worth (teaching students) so we went back to the standard leaded solder (low temp). These new bits seem to need more cleaning and seem more difficult to keep 'wet' than the previous tips. I use a bit cleaner in a small tube 25g of some sort of hard grey stuff that melts and smells but does clean the tip quite well.

I've fouund them easier to remove.

I'm guessing that due to the higher wattage the heat doesn;t need to be stored in the tip the same way it does with the XS range.

maybe ask then though.

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Reply to
whisky-dave

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