I need to purchase a new soldering tool. There are (too) many to choose from. What’s the best, not necessarily most expensive. What kind of power should it have. I want it to be sufficient but not more than I need. Most of my soldering is electrical connections and track building. Thanks much.
George
George, Go down the hill to A W Meyer on Broad St in Ridgefield Park, and look at the Weller kits. Get a 140/100 watt kit - it’s heavy enough for track work, and light enough for most electrical work. You also may want to pick up a pencil type 25 watt for fine electronics work. You also could go to Tooltown on 17south in Paramus. From a fellow north Jersey modeler, my [2c]
I use a Weller 100/140 watt soldering gun for everything from heavy electrical connections (110/220v) to soldering decoders. It cost less than $30 new just 3 months ago and I haven’t so much as melted a tie with it.
I’ll second the Weller recomendation. Their irons are top shelf and inexpensive. I use a 25w iron for almost everything including soldering to track. If done right, a larger iron isn’t nessesary. You might think about getting a 40 watt iron, depending on the scale you are in.
I’am on board with every one else.I us an 25 watt for all my model railroad needs.Also I use a good 60/40 solder
JIM
George,
You can count me in for Weller, too. They make a great product! [:)][tup] I actually prefer the soldering “stations” over just the plain pencil/stand combos because you can adjust the temperature.
Tom
I use the Weller WLC100 soldering station.
Search Google for WLC100 and you will see various online shops who sell them. I set the temp at 50 percent for most soldering. There is a tray under the iron support for the sponge. Spare tips are shown, used for fine PC board use.
If you have not soldered before, practice on scrap wire and track. You will have better results if you develope a procedure that suits you. Use only electrical solder with Rosin flux, not acid core or hardware solder used for general soldering. Make sure each wire/track connection point is clean before soldering.
http://www.teamnovak.com/tech_info/how_to/solder/index.html
I use a small scratch brush from Micro Mark to rough up the track where I want to solder at.
Rich
I got one of these from a seller on eBay for $33.00. I use it for my layout work. It comes with a 40watt iron and is adjustabel from 5 to 40 watts by a seperate controller that you build from a kit. You can also use the temperature controller part for a dremel speed control.
I also have a high dollar Hakko soldering station from when I was working as an elecronics tech, but the above station is very nice and I like it. (I don’t have to worry about abusing the Hakko on my layout.) It has a grounded tip for ESD work, so if you want to solder on DCC hot track (like at our club) you can put on a ground isolation adapter where the iron plugs into the controller.
Electrical connections can be fine electronic traces or 12-gauge busses. Track building can involve soldering #22 drops to code 40 rail - or soldering up chunks of code 100 into the midsection of a double slip switch. While the light work can be handled with a small (20-25 watt) pencil iron, the larger joints require something that can transfer significant heat quickly. My heavy hitter, used ONLY for track, is a 320 watt Weller gun old enough to run for President. For more reasonable requirements, I use the soldering station illustrated above.
This is a case where one size does NOT fit all.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Yeah, there are big jobs and small jobs. I’ve got a Weller gun for the large stuff, but after mangling the traces on a circuit board trying to solder components with it, I saw a variable-heat pencil iron at the electronics store, and bought it. Much easier to do circuit-board work, including some of the fine stuff you need for decoder installations, with a small-point iron.
OK, not to get too far off topic, but here is how you can lift a printed circuit board trace:
Apply a hot iron to the foil trace with a little bit of solder, press down, and pull on the trace from the free end. Works every time.
OK, why did I tell you how to do it? So you now know how it is done and don’t do it when soldering. If you need to, you can also re-glue the trace back down using a small amount of two part epoxy.
Decide if you want a soldering gun or a soldering iron. Guns heat up in seconds and cool down as fast. You can set a gun down on the layout, pick it up to solder, and then set it down cool. Irons take minutes to heat and then they stay hot. Once hot, an iron will solder faster than a gun 'cause the large tip holds more heat than the smaller tip on a gun. Down side of irons is the need for a heat proof stand and waiting for them to get hot. I have both, and usually pick up the gun for soldering rail or feeders to rail, or electrical connections under the layout. I use a small iron on a soldering station for PC board work.
Guns start at 100&something watts and go up from there. The smaller 100&something guns have plenty of power for HO rail. Irons start at 25 watts and can be had as large as 300 watts. Something in the 50 watt area is hot enough to solder rail. Over 150 watts is getting too large for small wires in close places.
Simple irons are just an electric heater that heats all the time. No temperature control. When you set one down, with the tip in air, it gets hotter than it ought to, and burns the tinning off the copper tip. You want to buy a metal soldering iron stand than keeps the tip cool by acting as a heat radiator. This way the tip stays tinned. The fancier irons, and the soldering stations have a thermostat that holds the tip at a constant temp. The electronics guys need this to prevent an overly hot iron from frying integrated circuits. It’s nice to have, but pricey, and you can get along with a cheaper, no thermostat, plain iron for model railroading. The nickel silver rail doesn’t fry like an IC. Neither does copper wire.
If you go with an iron for rail soldering get one with a chisel tip. It offers more contact area to the rail so more heat flows faster into the rail. &n
I concur with all advice given above. I use Weller soldering irons and guns at work and model railroading. You can find cheaper brands but you’ll end up spending just as much in the end as you would buying a Weller product and you’ll be minus the frustration. I recommend the soldering stations with adjustable temperature knob digital display is even better if you want to spend the $$.
A station will also give you a place to park the hot iron where is won’t burn you, your equipment or your scenery. Good soldering techniques and skills are developed with practice. If you know someone who knows how to solder, have them give you a demonstration.
Weller. [tup]