Soldering is one of those things where the tools you use have a direct impact on the quality and enjoyment of the work. Shitty $20 soldering irons from Home Depot not only produce awful results but they are incredibly frustrating. I’m pretty sure most people who think they suck at soldering and hate it only feel that way because their tool sucks. A good quality soldering iron and high quality, thin solder make a huge, huge difference in output.

If your experience with soldering is one of those cheap flimsy $30 dollar things from Amazon paired with fat, chunky solder… yeah you will hate soldering and you’ll never get even remotely good results. You don’t need to spend $500 dollar or anything but something like what is in this post and a $40 roll of thin gauge solder (which will last the rest of your life) will make soldering actually fun and enjoyable.

…I should also mention a solid, heavy parts holder factors into this as well.

>a $40 roll of thin gauge solder (which will last the rest of your life)

I dunno, I'm 56 and I'm about to finish the roll I bought as a teenager. (Albeit bought in pre-RoHS times.)

Hopefully your affairs are in order…

should things be in flux to be in order?

I've been going through a 1-2lb of solder a year recently, and find myself needing multiple thicknesses and types. But, I've been repairing guitar amps, organs, building lots of microphone preamps, outboard rack gear, digital projects, etc. Kester solder rocks.

I do remember my first pound lasted about 15 years though...

> Albeit bought in pre-RoHS times.

Yeah. Old high lead content solder is way nicer to solder with than modern stuff.

Since no other navy nukes have chimed in on this thread to speak about ETMS—eutectic point is a huge piece of the puzzle and there are tradeoffs for selecting between 60/40 and 63/37. Fillets suck, bifurcated terminals are worse.

For any other Navy nukes, I wanted to link to a good reference on what ETMS is (was?) but couldn’t readily find anything. If anyone has a reputable link to publicly available course material on their solder grading rubrics or the 7-step, I’d be interested.

Not what you're asking for, but I have this from NASA in my bookmarks:

"THROUGH-HOLE SOLDERING GENERAL REQUIREMENTS"

https://workmanship.nasa.gov/lib/insp/2%20books/links/sectio...

This one might be relevant too (but it's too long for me to read through right now to confirm):

"Military Standard - Standard requirements for soldered electrical and electronic assemblies (1989)"

https://electromet.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Electromet...

Was there an actual safe way to deal with this stuff besides maybe wearing a gas mask while you were working with it?

Why? Lead solder doesn't evaporate. The risk was always in recycling and maybe eating without having washed your hands. But you don't breathe in the solder, only the flux (which is even more toxic in lead-free solder applications).

we had overhead vacuum suction on all the terminals in the training environment. On the sub, not so much, but if you’re soldering^ underway, it’s because shit has hit the fan so badly that a bit of lead inhalation is the least of your worries.

edit: if you’re ^soldering *Nuke* stuff underway, it’s because things have hit the fan, and that’s the whole point of ETMS. Other rates also solder underway and might also use (did use) lead, and perhaps none of our inhalation was warranted.

Your last part undersells how important a parts holder is. Very often soldering is a 3 handed job. Quite frequently it is a 4 handed job. Somewhat often it is even a 5 handed job. You will save yourself a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth and end up with much better results if you have a way to line everything up beforehand and hold it steady.

Let’s couch it in real terms. You can try to attempt something poorly 20x because you can’t line things up and your hand isn’t steady and do a poor job with worse aesthetics and in 20x the time, risking damaging your part, or you can get it right the first time with ease and have it look great because everything was lined up and there was no real way that shaky hands might ruin it.

I speak from personal experience here. Spend a little bit and save time, money, and sanity and get a better result.

Be interesting to see how this stacks up to a good entry level iron like the Hakko FX-888DX.

https://hakkousa.com/fx-888dx.html

Hakko fx888 is a good quality iron but quite outdated tech. The biggest downside is it doesn’t measure the temperature at the tip, but at the heater.

When I first bought mine I tried to adjust the temperature in what felt like the natural way to do so, without rtfm first of course.

Then I quickly learned that I had adjusted the temperature calibration. I reverted what I had done but now I am not confident about the temperature its operating at, at all. Seems a terrible interface design.

Yep I did that too.

I recalibrated by using the thermocouple on my multimeter.

That's not my biggest problem though - my biggest problem has just been keeping tips tinned properly. I've succeeded once, but it constantly feels like a struggle.

I found that brass wool works better at keeping tips tinned. A sponge removes all the solder and you have to quickly tin the tip immediately after wiping, otherwise it oxidizes. Wiping with brass wool leaves a thin layer of solder on the tip.

Also keeping the tip at moderate temperature range helps avoid oxidation - most manufacturers recommend to never exceed 400 C. JBC recommends to not exceed 370 C.

Hope this helps.

Can you suggest an alternative please?

For affordable, semi-professional grade equipment, it is hard to beat Quick. I have Quick 202d + Quick 861dw. The tips on 202d are integrated with thermocouples and heating is indirect but inductive, which strikes a nice balance between the price of the tips (3x more affordable than cartridge tips) and performance (heats just like cartridge tips). The handle is light and has short grip-to-tip distance. I still use the original tips I bought a few years ago, so they last. I always soldered lead free and I’m shocked people on the internet find lead free hard. Some even said I must be nuts to solder lead free at 600-650F.

In the hakko line, fx-951 is the step-up which uses a heater and sensor in the tip (t15/t12 tips).

The alternative, for a hobbyist, would be something like this new iFixit iron, the Pinecil, Miniware TS80/TS100 or one of the variety of chinese irons from amazon and Aliexpress that take Hakko T12 tips (Quicko and similar).

On the high-end, professional side, it's JBC and Metcal. Expensive.

I recommend https://eleshop.eu/jbc-bt-2bqa-soldering-station.html

The handle is so light! Active tips! Heats up in 2 seconds. Goes to standby mode when you put away the handle to save the tips.

There's even a lighter compatible precision handle that you can buy.

Luke Gorrie posted a bunch of Twitter threads where he compare the sizes of soldering handles. Can't find it now but https://github.com/lukego/soldering might lead you to them.

Here's the photo of different soldering handles: https://x.com/lukego/status/1308366430849716226/photo/1

I upgraded to a Pace ADS200 and it’s dope.

I'm a ADS200 fan, too. Bought one recently after way too many years of using a 30W Weller. Having a big choice of tips is nice. As a bonus, it's made in the US. I've been able to tackle projects that I'd never have even thought of trying with the old soldering iron.

I can guarantee it is leagues better. Frankly, I won't solder anymore unless it is with a direct-heat iron. They heat up instantly, cool down quickly, provide far better thermal transfer, and are much more comfortable to hold.

Don't brush off what I'm saying before you try a direct-heat iron (Hakko sells them, Pace does, and JBC is the gold standard). They are usually expensive from the big names, but even a Pinecil direct-heat iron for $30$ would be many times better than non-direct-heat irons.

Oh man, I don't need to hear this. When I got my FX-888 I was blown away by the difference between it and the cheapo Radio Shack style one I had muddled through with as a teen. And now, for only $200 or so, I can get something that's another step change?

I don't even know when I last soldered and that's still tempting at a deep-seated nerd level.

I can't recommend a Pinecil enough. It's cheap as chips and basically has all the best features of other irons I've used. No complaints, I've half a mind to stockpile them and hand them out as gifts to nerd-inclined friends.

$30? $30?!

You got me. Pinecil is en route. Thanks for the recommendation!

Enjoy! Best hidden feature is the Bluetooth connectivity that lets you dial in precise controls from your phone or browser. It's definitely a keeper, and doubles as "that one RISC-V thing I own" when your nerd friends drop by.

Me too, I used to think I hated soldering, until I tried a proper solder station in a shop, but for the amount of repairs I do, I couldn't justify spend 200 in something like that, but this PINECIL sounds like a great middle ground.

It's pretty nice. The key is to have a high enough wattage USB that you can feed it over 50w for a quick heatup, in my experience. I use a fast charger brick I bought for my phone and it works like a charm.

Is the OP one a direct heat iron?

Yes. The easiest way to tell is the soldering "tip" is much more than a tip. It's a cartridge. [1]

[1] https://hackaday.com/2024/09/12/review-ifixits-fixhub-may-be...

This is the key question.

Oh yeah, it will be MUCH better, not even close. And I own a Hakko. The new wave of USB irons is incredibly better

I am, it should be noted, _fucking terrible_ at soldering. But my TS-101 actually gives me hope. I'm so happy with it.

(It's also incredibly, incredibly useful for heat-set inserts, because you get to decide really precisely how long they will take to insert!)

You're correct that some soldering irons (especially uber-cheap ones) are shit, but Pinecil proves cheap can also be good. Past a certain point, soldering becomes a hobby about how dangerous you're willing to get to make things easier on yourself. You can swap out non-toxic solder for lead trace if you want a cleaner board; then there are high-wattage irons, board reflow/fluxing, and even all sorts of scale-specific hacks.

When you zoom out, I think home soldering is about as effective as it can reasonably get without fumigating your house.

I think for simple through-hole stuff, this should be fine. However, so much stuff now requires SMT reflow and a hot air wand (and likely a binocular microscope) that except for home builds and power electronics, I rarely use an actual iron.

As you say, it's so much easier to get good solder joints (especially for the fine stuff like QFN/BGA) with lead blends and flux, that having a vent hood is likely required as well.

It's cheaper and easier to get a USB microscope and look at a laptop screen than to peer through a binocular microscope.

I've used only lead-free solder for a decade. Get the good stuff with some silver in it and it's not difficult.

I have a cheap binocular microscope at home, and solder most everything underneath it. A USB microscope is much lower resolution, and the image lags. They're pretty terrible.

At work I get to use a very very expensive Olympus binocular microscope. It is extraordinarily good, but at about 60k it costs more than a car.

My digital microscope has no lag and brilliant resolution. You can easily solder under it just looking at the screen. Just don't get the super cheap ones but one for maybe 150€ or so.

Yeah you can get an old Bauch&Lomb for under $200. Probably need an LED illuminator ring for $10 too.

They have great field of view (cm) at decent/variable magnification (20-100x) and response time is instant, whereas your phone/USB are going to have just enough delay to be annoying.

I meant to say depth of field, not field of view.

I usually use my phone zoomed in + flashlight in video recording, and an external macro lens. It probably isn't as good as a usb microscope, but it works really, really well.

Looking at videos of people using microscopes, the quality seems to be on-par or worse than my phone.

I have a USB microscope and I'd say my phone on 5x soft-zoom is a pretty similar experience. The main thing is having enough screen size you can see, and a stable platform.

Plus USB scope things are like $80 on AliExpress and work fine.

Can you recommend a macro lens to use?

I actually just picked it up from a random airport store. So, it isn't like a specific brand or anything.

I have 2 vision engineering Mantis and I have yet to see a video system that can rival it to work under it, no lag, “real” 3D vision (you can move your head to see behind magnified objects). The only things I miss sometimes is more magnification and a camera port to take pictures/ videos. As per soldering iron I could write a book, I had Hakko, Pace, Metcal, Weller, Ersa and to me the best experience is with JBC although the tips might not last if you’re not careful.

As much as I'd love to try your suggestions, they're very expensive even in that space.

From what I can see, the Mantis microscopes are in the $3500+ range and the JBC stuff is similarly expensive.

Most hobbyists would cringe at the price of buying a Thermaltronics soldering iron and that's like 5x cheaper. However, I can at least conclusively demonstrate the vast difference between something like that and a Hakko right in front of a person.

This stuff is like the difference between a $100 guitar, a $500 guitar, and a $2000 guitar. The difference between the $100 and the $500 one is obvious to almost everybody. The differences between the $500 and $2000 one won't be obviously noticeable until you get a lot of experience.

Absolutely, don’t get me wrong, all the other brands are fine tools, and nowadays even aliexpress soldering stations work wonders even for professional use, years ago only metcal and JBC had the “instant heat” technology, same for the microscope 4k 120fps cameras are trivial now but not so long ago they where unaffordable for the common person and optical stereo inspection micoscopes were a bit more affordable but the working distance and as commented here they are uncomfortable for longer use, the mantis was a revolution in that too.

> It's cheaper and easier to get a USB microscope and look at a laptop screen than to peer through a binocular microscope.

I find the lag to be murder when trying to solder very small things. I can use a USB microscope in a pinch, but it makes me miserable.

My mother was recently cataloging some very small pots from an archaeological dig. I sent her with my nice camera, a prime lens, some macro adapters, and an adapter that would let her mount the body to the eyepiece of a microscope. The detail she was able to capture with the prime and macro adapters so vastly exceeded the capabilities of the university microscope that she decided to just use the camera, which had the additional advantage of having focus stacking to compensate for the shallow depth of field.

I would expect that this setup would work pretty well for a bench microscope setup if the camera can output video and isn't too big to mount on a tabletop tripod. Rather a lot can be done with crop zoom if you can get the focal length and lighting right.

Jewler's Loupes work as well.

In a pinch, but you have to get your nose way too close to the soldering iron.

I stumped up for a set of dental loupes many moons ago and they were nice, but expensive. They're safety glasses to boot.

They're come down dramatically in price since then. https://www.practicon.com/Loupes-Magnifying-Eyewear

You seen knowledgeable. I've used leaded solder in my bedroom / apartments since community college, usually with a fan in the room or a window open. What damage could have or has happened?

The biggest danger that's specific to leaded solder is accidental ingestion. Both the common methods of cleaning your iron (damp sponge and brass wool) produce many tiny little balls of solder. They're difficult to see, and because they're round and dense they easily roll and bounce to unexpected places. They can get caught in your clothes and potentially end up falling in food.

The fumes are flux fumes, not lead fumes. They're still bad to breathe but not specific to leaded solder.

Depends, how much solder did you eat?

In all seriousness, very little. I would personally want more than just a bathroom fan to do fume evacuation. Outside on a patio/balcony is my usual spot. I also have a 120mm computer fan that I hacked onto a gooseneck mount so I can blow the fumes away from my face.

The times I can't be outside, usually due to weather, I use a table right in front of an open window, and one of those dual fan window fans set to exhaust mode, and that sucks the fumes outside effectively.

I'd call that a reasonably good setup, and, as a bonus, the fumes don't hit me directly in the face, which soldering fumes have a tendency to do.

I didn't think lead, in it's metallic form, had a particularly high toxicity. I thought it was lead salts that were the problem.

I mean, it depends. It's mostly dangerous to kids, because it's detrimental to brain development. Not exactly vitamins for anyone though.

Also something to remember about ingestion is that, lead only forms salts in acidic environments, and, your stomach is quite acidic, which is why it's such a problem. Combine that with lead accumulating in your body and, well, it's best to avoid it, and it's simple enough to avoid it.

I'm no doctor, but if you've only done a few hours of this and you're 20+ it's probably no big deal. However, you are breathing lead vapor and it's not good for you (if you're at 100s of hours and 12yo that's really not good). If it gets on things you eat, it's also bad. The effects are permanent.

We had leaded (Ethyl) gasoline in cars which was banned 25 years ago and that had noticeable statistical effects on IQ an emotional regulation (violence) for more than a generation.

You're not breathing lead vapor. You're breathing flux vapor, which is probably not optimal either.

https://www.quora.com/Can-I-get-lead-poisoning-from-inhaling...

Yes but lead particulate is going every where and if you touch lips, You’re ingesting it.

The primary means of exposure in a lab setting is through ingestion of particulate matter by getting it on your food or clothes -> mouth

Well, like I said I'm no doctor, but I don't know that I'd use quora to make medical decisions.

Here's an environmental safety article from MIT. It mentions lead oxide fumes from soldering. What do I know other than the required lab safety training.

https://ehs.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/EHS-0167.pdf

It says that lead fumes are unlikely to be generated:

Based on standard soldering iron temperatures of 620°F-700°F and the melting point of lead (621°F), it is unlikely that lead fume will be generated during electronic soldering, unless the solder is heated to lead’s vaporization temperature of 3182°F.

Interesting that you skip right past the part that I mentioned about lead oxide fumes.

   "During the soldering process in the form of lead filler metals, lead oxide
   fumes are formed and excessive exposure to lead oxide fumes can result in
   lead poisoning."

It's right there and easy to read.

At hundreds of hours, you're fine. Honestly, even at thousands of hours, you're probably okay.

Most of the fumes come from the flux boiling way, not the solder itself. (Mind you, I still wouldn't recommend breathing flux fumes. Those are bad in their own way. Adequate ventilation is important!)

Lead is unequivocally bad for you, but the amount that actually enters your system from soldering activities is miniscule.

It's good to minimize these substances in our daily life since they do add up over decades. The problem with leaded gas in cars is that there were just so many cars out there burning the stuff. Duration of exposure and amount of exposure both matter.

That said... do wash your hands after handling leaded solder, especially before eating.

(I used to have a summer job in high school assembling circuit boards for an electronics test company. I easily clocked a couple hundred hours soldering under a magnifying lamp with leaded solder. I'm sure the burns I gave myself from accidently touching the soldering iron itself did more damage than the lead. :P)

> The problem with leaded gas in cars is that there were just so many cars out there burning the stuff. Duration of exposure and amount of exposure both matter.

The difference is not the amount of cars, but that the temperature and pressure in car engines makes lead vaporise, so it can be breathed in.

A soldering iron doesn't reach those temperatures (vaporising the lead is the opposite of what you want when soldering).

Interestingly enough, the leaded-solder topic is a hot-button issue in some online communities. People get angry about it, and I don't have an explanation for why.

As a (former) owner of a dogshit soldering iron, I think it makes sense. People with weaker irons struggle to work with unleaded solder and tend to write it off entirely mostly because of their equipment. If you have an appropriately hot iron, both types of solder will generally behave the same which makes it a bit of a no-brainer to use non-toxic solder.

That being said - leaded solder is easier to work with regardless of what iron you use. It's very easy to fix mistakes and even wicks up without a trace on most PCBs. I personally don't use it, but I think it's easy to see how people will blame their solder before their iron.

You can get good temperature-controlled 936-style soldering stations for less than $30. Spend the rest of your budget on solder, flux, and an assortment of tips.

Counterpoint - I got a £8 ($10?) chinese iron including bits and bobs and solder and it works fine. (similar to https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/387009386986?_skw=soldering+iron&... )

I guess it depends how much you are going to use it.

Flux, the secret is more flux.

I haven't found flux to make much a difference at all to the problems I have with soldering. It turns liquid, and nothing happens still - and I've gone through a bunch of fluxes at all brand levels.

> Flux, the secret is more flux.

And patience. As tempting as it may be, don't think "if I double the temp, I won't be waiting for this big joint to start pulling in solder".

good flux, clean/sharp tip and proper patience can take you a very long way! (a steady hand and good rubbing alcohol will take you the rest of the way)

More flux, and a stash of old lead/tin solder...

dunno. my first ever soldering project was a handwired keyboard. i was popcorning when i finished. it was my first time using a mechanical switch keyboard too. not bad... 2° project, right after finishing the keyboard was soldering a PMW3360 sensor to someone's board from Github. it was a freaking blast on my 40W, 40 BRL (~ 8 USD) solder

i still have it & i'm selling handwired keyboards at a very cheap price (made with it), trying to set a non-profit that sells fair priced handwired keyboards with Vial & aims to teach the basics of electronics for teens... i can't see myself supplying anything more expensive than cheap solders, nor i can see what joy i would get from an expensive solder tool

my wiring for reference -> https://happort.org/keyboard_example.png

Popcorning: "the happy little jump that guinea pigs give when they are full of joy"

In case anyone else was wondering.

Oh good. In the context of soldering "popcorning" typically means explosive steam formation that puffs up the package a part, often an expensive part because bigger / more complicated packaging is a risk factor. I was having trouble making that fit with the rest of the post.

I went through the same thing, it was a really unfortunate choice of words in the context.

That's wonderful - I used to solder with a cheap iron until university. A nice iron gets a lot hotter, and it makes everything easier and faster. It may not matter for keyboards, but on a small PCB where everything is a few mm part, the precision of a good tip matters too.

> …I should also mention a solid, heavy parts holder factors into this as well.

I'd just like to note for anyone googling for one after reading this- the Harbor Freight "helping hands" holder and its ilk are the exact opposite of what you want, unless your goal is to have your target falling over endlessly.

I don't let my daughter date anyone that can solder (or carnival workers or clowns).

If my daughter dated someone who could solder, I think she would roll her eyes and find someone else to date the first time we geeked out over hardware.

lol

The tips make a huge difference too!

Agree. It's kind of like a chef's knife: a better tool makes you a better chef.

A sharp knife is also quite a bit safer than a dull knife. By heating to operating temperature in 5 seconds and rapidly pouring heat into the material, you don't have to hold the hot iron as long. As soon as you're done, pop on the safety cap and instantly shield the hot metal.

Soldering isn't remotely mainstream, and part of that is the quality of tools. We set out to streamline the entire process to make soldering as accessible as possible.

For all edge tools be they for cooking, woodworking, forestry or something else: buy steel, not sharp. Henkels, Lie-Nielsen, Gransfors Bruk, Victorinox, or Stanley is only going to sharpen it for you once.

Corollary: learn to sharpen. The best steel in the world isn't going to cut anything if it's dull.

For the record, I sharpen chisels almost daily and I hate sharpening kitchen knives. The carbides set at the right angle in the handle you pull down the length of the blade will keep your knives a lot sharper than a set of Japanese water stones you never use.

If you live in a reasonably large metro area that has a lot of good restaurants, there is going to be a small handful of cooking knife sharpeners. A large percentage of professional chefs can't afford/justify good quality sharpening equipment for something that they use a couple times per year.

They'll take their knives to these services and pay $5 or $6 per knife, and it will get done to perfection in just a few minutes while they wait. You can use these same services, there is no membership card needed to get in the door.

I live at the literal end of the internet: there are no more poles beyond our house. Surprisingly, one of the hardware stores in the area has a robot knife sharpener. I'm tempted to try it, but the only time I remember is when I'm already there without a knife!

When we were still in the Boston area, a lot of the hardware stores and farmers markets would have a knife sharpening service come one day a month.

I’ve been told to stay away from any kind of sharpening that isn’t specifically for cooking knives - the angle of the blade is supposed to be different.

I don’t have actual knowledge, just what I’ve been told by chefs.

I am completely confused by your example. Buying a better knife doesn't make you a better chef. Buying a faster car doesn't make you a better driver. Buying a more powerful laptop doesn't make you a better developer.

Do you cook? There are dozens of obvious examples. A crappy knife will tear instead of cut. You'll ruin tomatoes, have uneven dices, crush and smear delicate herbs, have ripped apart meat and fish that you'll destroy more trying to get rid of the trim. That's not counting the downtime you'll have when the knife slips instead of cuts and you can't cook at all due to injury.

Giving an expensive knife to a new cook that has never cooked before will not make them a Michelin chef, but their progress will be faster when they don't have the knife working against them.

> Giving an expensive knife to a new cook that has never cooked before will not make them a Michelin chef

Pick any Michelin-rated restaurant at random and visit the kitchen. You'll find plenty of $50 knives in use. It doesn't take a lot of money to build a good-enough-for-world-class-cooking knife. Once you get beyond a certain price point, it's mostly about personal preferences and "situations that apply to me but may or may not apply to you".

Hmm. I'm far from an expert, but I have seen chefs at work in person in about a dozen michelin star places over the years, and in videos/books/etc. of many more. My anecdotal experiences have lead me to believe that no, the knives they use for the majority of tasks day in and day out are not $50 knives. They might have some cheaper knives (usually victorinox from what I've seen) for specific purposes but when it came to chef's knives/gyutos, they were all more expensive. Not necessarily super expensive - I've seen tons of Globals, Macs, and Misonos over the years and their stuff is more like the $150-$200ish range. But I've also seen people with high-end small production Japanese blacksmiths, too.

Fair enough :)

I'll just point out that your standard workhorse Global 8" is easily available for $80ish. Probably even cheaper in Japan with the exchange rates.

Fair enough, but for anyone wondering, you can make a shit knife shine if you take good care of it! Sharpening it, using a chef's honing steel in between some harder cuts to take care of those nasty burrs and you're off to the races!

I cook, and I disagree with the assertion that a better knife makes you a better cook. Good knives are useful, but ultimately you're still going to produce crappy results if you're a bad cook with a good knife.

A bad dull knife bruises and smashes more than it cuts. If a first time cook was making a salsa, the one made with the good knife would be better as the tomatoes would be juicer and not all smushed.

Use a serrated knife.

A dull serrated knife does the same thing.

A better cook will want sharper knives.

A better cook knows that if her knives are dull, she won’t perform as well.

So untrue.

The only thing a better knife does is save you prep time. Being a good cook is about understanding how different materials cook, when different foods are "done", how flavors work together, and how to improvise when things go outside the plan/recipe or adapt to novel situations.

Cutting technique is only important if you're a professional chef with actual time constraints and can't afford to spend an extra 30 seconds cutting an onion.

While I do agree - you can (or should be able to) get any knife to shave. They may lack edge retention or proper geometry but slicing/cutting/chopping is doable with pretty much any knife, as long as you can sharpen them. I'd say getting any knife to cut tomatoes flawlessly with just a brick and some water is not a hard task.

That being said, I still prefer diamond stones (sharpening wise)

I have a ~80 dollar knife that is dull as an EA and you're vastly exaggerating.

Tomatoes, meat, fish, I use my $4 serrated knife. Everything else is fine. With proper technique it's basically impossible to cut yourself even with a very dull knife.

I don't cook, but I solder. And I got a lot of mileage out of a dirt cheap Radio Shack iron. Well, I do cook, but I'm not into it or as skilled at it to the degree I am with soldering.

Now you've introduced "expensive" muddying the argument even more :-)

That is a common fallacy, I suspect it comes from having enough budget to not having to think about being able to afford something decent.

It is like photographers with $5,000 worth of equipment in their camera bags telling you that equipment doesn’t matter. I mean, there is a reason why they spend all that money right? Of course a good photographer will be able to get good results with a cheap camera, but only in situations where that cheap camera can actually capture the scene. For example, if it is not sensitive enough to capture enough light at night time, you are not getting night time shots, period, no matter how good you are. (this very much used to be a thing 10 years ago)

If you employ programmers, you will buy fast workstations because it will make them MUCH more productive. A slow computer will interrupt your work by making you wait.

I think it is in fact the exact opposite, the better you are at something, the more likely it is that you become limited by your equipment. I will probably not be able to cook better if I get very expensive knives. But I would speculate that an actual professional cook or butcher will be able to work better with sharp knives that keep their edges well.

Programmers are also frequently better equipped to make underpowered machines work for them, by adjusting their techniques, monitoring resource usage and stopping or uninstalling things like bloatware. Whereas normal people will tend to struggle if they just buy the cheapest machine they can find.

The problem is that bad tools can be a limiting factor, regardless of skill level. The more skilled you are the more likely you are able to compensate for bad tools, but you'd still be more productive with good ones.

A knife that won't hold it's edge will mean you are explicitly going to perform worse as a chef - you will get ragged cuts, you will be more at risk for injuring yourself, etc.

A slow laptop will mean you learn more slowly - doubly so if you are working with compiled languages or anything where you spend significant processing time before determining the outcome of whatever you're working on. The quicker you can get feedback on your work, be it from compilation errors, manual review of the output, your tests running, etc., the more you get to iterate and the more you get to learn.

A cheap soldering iron explicitly can make soldering more difficult and result in worse outcomes, particularly for a beginner.

Be it cooking, soldering, photographing, programming, whatever, there is frequently a point where going from a cheaper tool to a more expensive one will make the life of a beginner easier and let them produce better outcomes. As you get more skilled you can learn how to more quickly and easily sharpen knives, or produce fewer bugs in your code, or how to better handle aperture vs. ISO or whatever. But in those cases there will still often be productivity/efficiency gains from using nicer tools

no, but with a shitty laptop it can be hard to be a good developer. having dull knives will make cooking experience, slow, dangerous, and unpleasant. having a boat-car will make it difficult to practice any sort of skilled driving.

it's not that you can't overcome adversity and do the thing anyhow, but you're certainly not making it easy. In all cases, using the proper tool allows you to remove the extra difficulty factor and focus on that task at hand.

But also, cutting a tomato with a sharp knife is way, way easier than with a dull knife. Same with soldering. Ignores the rest of the parts of being a chef, but you get the comparison.

"Better" is definitely the wrong word, but the jist is sound with the right framing. A better tool often allows you to do work safer, and that is what was attempted to be conveyed. Applying the approach to one of your examples, a faster car doesn't make you a better driver, but a car with more safety features makes your driving experience safer than one with less.

My dull chef's knife got caught when I chopping an onion and nearly lopped my fingertip off. I was not a very good chef that night.

I'm not sure what that has to do with better vs worse tools. Expensive knives get dull too. Good chefs, on the other hand, keep their equipment in working order regardless of its value.

A dull knife is a worse tool.

You’re getting awfully literal, though.

So you are saying tool maintenance (well any maintenance) is important?

I have been a huge advocate of the pinecil and haven't used anything else in years. It's just so easy to grab my pinecil and temporarily use my laptop's power supply for the iron, or use a mobile battery, instead of moving myself and the things I am working on to the location of my soldering station. These look like upgrades compared to pinecil:

- comfier grip

- shorter tip length and presumably a more solid feel (the pinecil's mechanical interface to the tip is pretty loose-feeling)

- higher power over usb-c (actually can't think of a time I've needed more than 60W for hobby stuff, but I can imagine use cases like large ground planes)

- storage cap (this is a major improvement for working in a temporary, tight space)

All of these would be worth the price increase over pinecil, but unfortunately I think the lack of on-iron temperature settings is a dealbreaker. The pinecil in my toolbag is practically the size of a sharpie and works with my existing usb-c cables and batteries with no extra space taken up, and the killer feature (portability) is broken once you need a proprietary battery or a laptop to change temperature.

Thanks for the feedback! The storage cap indeed makes a huge difference when you have to do something quickly and then put the iron away.

In our testing, we rarely need to change temperatures. I think our algorithm does a better job of responding to the power load and flowing heat into the material than other irons. Of course, if you're changing solder then you'll need to change the temperature setting.

We built the web interface with mobile in mind. We just need a mobile browser that supports web serial. Someone else posted a WebUSB polyfill, and I'm going to check that out tomorrow.

Pinecil isn't limited to 60W at least not the pinecil v2, I think the v2 goes to like 140W using EPR

Looks much like the pinecil [0] (which I love btw if I have no acess to decent equipment) but with Webinterface ?!? Love the look though.

[0] https://pine64.com/product/pinecil-smart-mini-portable-solde...

Pinecil can not deliver actual 100w, and most chinese type-c handles can neither. This one uses real buck converter which can help with this problem.

Pinecil V2 is specified to be 88w -- less than 100, but not very far off.

And with a (simple) firmware change and the appropriate 28v EPR charger, it can do 140w.

I goofed up. It can do 126w (not 140w) with the appropriate charger.

https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Pinecil#Power_Chart

Yes, and your link shows that the power delivered is dependent on tip resistance (which can vary with temperature). Hence pinecil --or almost any other usb-c iron-- cannot control real power delivered.

And you cannot fix this with updates, no firmware can magically grow buck converter with beefy inductor inside the iron...

Yes, and yes. And absolutely not.

The chart is intended to show values for both kinds of tips that are usable on a Pinecil. V2 tips have a lower resistance, by design, and either style can be used with either handle.

Temperature is not indicated, although resistance can vary with temperature. But then: Temperature is never indicated for power of soldering irons. If you want to begin a trend of producing this data and filling this void, then by all means do so. Let me know how I can help.

And no, we absolutely do not need a buck converter to accomplish heating a resistive element in a circuit, nor to use PWM to modulate the average power dissipation of this circuit. (A buck converter can be used; sure! But E=IR and P=IE anyway.)

Sure, P=I²R but only when you control the current. And P=U²/R when you control voltage. But USB-C can only give you 9V, 12V, 15V or 20V (depending on source, several of these steps might be missing), or 28/48V with EPR.

Given that resistance is mostly fixed you cannot reach the maximum rated power, unless your tip is precisely matched for any of these fixed steps. And PWM does not work with some power sources because of sensitive overcurrent protection.

So you're saying that the iFixit iron can reach maximum rated power (100w) from 9v, 12v, 15v, and 20v, and 28v/48v? Or some subset of these?

Or what, exactly? What function does a buck converter serve in this application?

You'll have to spell it out for me, because right now using a buck converter in a portable USB-powered soldering iron sounds like a solution looking for a problem to solve.

Yes, this allows ifixit's iron reach maximum power the supply can provide (usually requesting maximum supported voltage and sinking up to maximum allowed current), regardless of current temperature and/or tip model.

Most of casual users of usb-c irons do not care about it, but if you ever used professional stuff, these usb toys appear to be deficient in comparison.

That all makes sense, but: Isn't a pro likely to be inclined to keep the most correct portable USB brick with their portable soldering iron?

They are universal, after all -- at least downwardly.

And what may be some examples of a "pro" soldering iron that uses a buck converter (or transformer taps or whatever) to be flexible to a variety of input voltages?

Is the reason a buck converter is required so that it can increase I? I = V/R, by increasing V we can increase I?

I suspect the usb-PD standard doesn't allow for raising the voltage any more than they already do

Even if usb PD could go up to over 9000 volts, it can only provide fixed set of voltages, none of which can really match what every tip requires

Actually that's not true anymore, PD Revision 3.1 has an adjustable voltage supply mode that can do any intermediate voltage between 15-48v, with a maximum power of 240W: https://www.usb.org/usb-charger-pd

I don't know how widespread support for that is though.

PD2.0 is here for a decade already, yet many power bricks skip steps between 5v and 20v, so I wouldn't hold my breath here...

PD with EPR can go up to 48V, 28V support is common-ish.

They compare the two in the article:

>The star of the show is, of course, the Smart Soldering Iron. It’s a 100 watt iron that comes up to operating temperature in under five seconds and can work with any suitably beefy USB-C Power Delivery source. The size and general proportions of the iron are very close to the Pinecil V2, though the grip is larger and considerably more comfortable to hold. The biggest difference between the two however is the absence of a display or configuration buttons. According to iFixit, most users don’t change their settings enough to justify putting the interface on the iron itself. That doesn’t mean you can’t tweak the iron’s settings when used in this stand-alone configuration, but we’ll get back to that in a minute.

> The accelerometer detects when you pick it up and heats it back up.

I don't want this. I would rather push a button and wait for a light to turn on. Automatic off, fine, I guess, though I don't love it and would never want to rely on it. Automatic on, no way.

By default, the timer is set to 30 seconds. You can turn the whole feature off, and it'll never bother you again!

> You can turn the whole feature off, and it'll never bother you again!

Awesome. Thank you!

I have something like this on a TS100 and it works fine. You set it down for a while because you're still soldering but you need to move stuff and it reduces the heat. Then you pick it back up and by the time you've gotten to part it's already back up the temp.

How is that worse than it just being full temp the whole time?

It's just unnecessary complexity and another thing that can go wrong. I know when I'm using it and not using it. I don't need the device to guess. The device guessing doesn't actually improve my life in any way.

And it's going to guess wrong a lot of the time. Automatically turning on and off both have unsafe failure modes that lead to it being on unexpectedly (it turns back on when I don't expect it to, and it doesn't turn off when I do expect it to) based on imperfect sensing hardware and software that can both stop working, and I'm not ok with unsafe failure modes in a device that will burn down my house.

This is also the reason that I disfavor battery-powered soldering irons in general, but at least being portable adds something you may need and can't otherwise achieve.

In the case of the TS100 it doesn't turn off, it just cools down.

I've never had it guess wrong -- my hand isn't so steady that it will turn off while I'm using it. If it's on and on the table, it is still visibly ON so this is just extra safety if it's a little bit cooler.

The tip will get nasty sitting there at max temps for extended periods.

Agreed. There's a place for open, smart tools. Some things want to have serial interfaces and sensors and so on, that will do a whole host of actions automatically.

Other times you just want the equivalent of a drill or toaster. Pull trigger, drill spins. Twist chuck or shift gearbox, it slips or changes speeds. Push toast down, it toasts, twist the dial if you want darker or lighter.

An on/off switch, a potentiometer or 7-segment and some buttons to set temp, and a nice, fast, powerful PID loop to control the temperature (with a 120V AC cable to make 100W all day not a problem) is all I want in a soldering iron. I have a combination soldering/hot air station that's almost 20 years old, it just always works.

I have this feature on my Pinecil and it's annoying. Need to look into turning it off. I really just want to be in control of whether my iron is on (I'm working with it) or off (I'm finished with it). Generally speaking I never want it off while it's plugged in.

Any plans to make a hot tweezer tip for this? It's hard to come by those for a reasonable price and that would be very appealing since I've often found myself needing to desolder surface-mount components.

I was initially skeptical about the cap vs. a traditional stand until I saw that it mounts to the side of the battery pack to double as a stand. I like that idea!

Also, is there documentation on the serial protocol used in case someone wanted to write a temperature control program that didn't rely on a webapp?

Hot tweezers is a fun idea we've been talking about. How would you like to see it implemented?

Yes, we really love the cap. It instantly safes the iron when you're done.

We'll post more documentation on the serial interface, it's pretty straightforward. A temperature control program would be no problem.

> Hot tweezers is a fun idea we've been talking about. How would you like to see it implemented?

I suppose probably as a separate USB-C soldering iron. I was initially thinking of them as an attachment to the existing iron that would add an extra grip section, but now that I'm thinking about it a bit more that might be a bit too unwieldy. (And it would be helpful for hot tweezers to also have swappable tips for working with different components.)

> We'll post more documentation on the serial interface, it's pretty straightforward. A temperature control program would be no problem.

Thank you! I wish more companies would be this open about their products' interfaces.

After a quick look at the specs:

Plus

* 5 secs to temp. * Heat resistant, vented cap. * User can change auto idle and sleep times.

Minus

* Need iFixit power station or computer to change temp and other settings. * No temp indicator on the iron. No mention if the LED indicates it's reached set temp.

I'd love to keep a small, lightweight, high-quality portable iron in my tool bag ready for quick repairs. It needs to heat fast and be instantly capped and tossed back in the tool bag without waiting for cool down. However, I don't want to carry the iFixit power bank in my small tool bag. Yet without it, I'd need to pull out a laptop to change temp. And I do need to change temp enough for that to be annoying. Especially when there USB irons which have temp readouts and controls on the device. While cheap, those irons generally don't get to temp in 5 secs, have a well-thought out heat resistant cap and aren't high-quality.

The LED on the iron turns orange once it reaches your target temperature. It glows purple while it's heating, and blue when it's safe to touch.

How cultures are different across the globe, I would have used RED for hot, orange for heating and green for safe (instead of orange, purple and blue - love purple though!)

If I had to guess, it's for accessibility, for red/green colorblindness.

Interesting, I'm not sure that colorblindness can be severe enough for that to be a problem. I'm red/green colorblind, but I have no issue with stoplights or LEDs. Things onlystart to get hairy once the spectrum shifts closer to the browns such as forest green or burnished slate.

I would settle for red while hot and yellow while heating, but keep blue for safe (for colorblind reasons as mentioned by other commenter)

> It glows purple while it's heating

This is not correct, it pulses blue indicating the iron is heating, and when turned off, pulses purple while cooling.

You appear to be replying to the co-founder of iFixit, so presumably he knows what he's talking about.

https://www.ifixit.com/Document/CPMKU1yOZAYVXbpB/FixHub_Sold...

What he says matches their documentation as well:

>Blue LED: The iron is below 40° C / 100° F and is safe to touch.

>Purple LED: The iron is actively heating up or cooling down. Iron tip is not safe to touch.

>Orange LED: The iron has reached the user-set temperature and is ready for soldering. Iron tip is not safe to touch.

I was quoting from the article, which, admittedly, isn’t straight from the horses mouth. If there’s a discrepancy, one of them is wrong (I think I know which).

> While there’s no display, the illuminated ring behind the grip does provide a visual indicator of what the iron is doing: solid blue means it has power but the heating element is off, a pulsing blue indicates the iron is heating, and orange means it has reached the desired temperature. If you flick the heater switch off, the ring pulses purple until it cools back off and returns to blue.

I do have a TS100 which I use either with a battery pack or a wall charger. For storing it, I am using a metal casing that is used for a single cigar. There's also room for a tiny metal cleaning brush which protects the tip during storage. Given that all of this is metal and that the soldering iron doesn't have that much thermal capacity, I can pack it up while the tip is still hot and the casing will only get mildly warm, but not to the point where it'd cause damage.

/me going to the store, to buy a cigar

Look up the Sequre S99 soldering iron. Basically what you are looking for.

A ring light indicates if it's reached set temp.

I paid ~$100 for my Hakko FX888D, and have had had that for almost 10 years. Looking on the Internet, the price hasn't gone up much. Not sure whether this (for $250 including the power supply) is a class above that. The repairability is a definite plus (assuming parts continue to be available for many years), and all the nerdy features are also cool, but not sure how useful they will be in the real world.

It will almost certainly be a class up, if only because it uses integrated tips that combine heating element, temperature sensor, and tip itself into a single element, rather than having thermally bulky and inefficient interfaces like the FX888d's replaceable separate tips. So you get faster heating and more accurate temperature control.

But there's the rub: there are a TON of USB-C irons that use integrated tips, and most are cheaper than this new iFixit iron, so you can get that class improvement for the same price as your Hakko station, so I'm curious if their improvements are a big enough step up from _those_ irons to justify the price.

On the flip side wouldn't that make replacement tips much more expensive? On my old Hakko station I've replaced the tips several times but the element and sensor seems to be going strong.

They're more expensive, but they tend to last longer (at least for JBC & this new iFixit iron since they lower temperature when not in use), allow much nicer more precise temperature control, and often can have significantly more power output and/or thermal mass (depending on the particular tip). JBC tips in particular can be changed while still hot, one-handed, thanks to their iron holders having a tip puller & holder built-in.

The delta in price isn't that different. Legit Hakko tips for FX888/903/907 are ~$7-10 each. Legit Hakko tips for T12/T15 are only $12-20 apiece. Twice as much, sure, but how many tips do you really go through? We're talking probably sub-$30 over many years in cost delta, for some significant advantages.

Legit JBC tips are closer to $20-40, but those are just a different price tier and much more premium. You can also get knockoff/clone JBC tips for $10 pretty easily, and in my experience they work just fine.

Yes, it makes tips more expensive. However, for the about of improvement in performance, I think it is worth it. I use Hakko T15 tips and they are about $20 each. Cheaper Chinese compatible toys are available and probably are good enough, but I don't replace yours frequently enough to care to find out.

The FX888 is an older style iron where the tip and heating element are separate components, the newer generation (such as this iFixit one) have the tip, heater and temperature sensor integrated as a single component which allows them to regulate the tip temperature much faster and more accurately. Hakko does make irons of that type now but they're very expensive, up in the $500 range.

Another benefit of the newer style irons is the tip can usually be hot-swapped (literally while it's still hot) without having to unscrew anything, you just need something insulating to pull the tip out with.

It's worth noting that with some practice you can unscrew the hot metal tip holder with pilers, flip the tip out into a tray, drop the new cold tip in, and screw it all back using the pliers in 30 seconds or so.

Only $80 for the iron itself though, compatible with any USB-C PD power supply.

The pinecil is $25.

Visiting US shop pinecil is 26$: https://pine64.com/product/pinecil-smart-mini-portable-solde...

EU shop? 65 Euros... https://pine64eu.com/product/pinecil-smart-mini-portable-sol...

The difference is surprising. Digging deeper, the US shop does not include shipping or taxes. To get an idea, I tried for CA and that already adds $12. That's already $38 without custom tax and VAT.

Maybe some EU regulation in action that forces to put price up-front without "hidden costs" so one can compare prices more efficiently (within EU).

As another 888 owner, I'm not moved.

As plenty of folks have said, the FX-888D is an "older" design in the sense that the heating element and tip are separate components. But, that isn't to say that this layout is obsolete - it's still very common and Hakko (among others) still makes new irons using the same system.

Given that iFixit's design uses a TRS jack as a tip mount, you can safely assume there will never be a hook tip for this particular iron, and wide chisels are probably out of the question too. That makes this iron a non-starter for me, but it all depends on your use case.

What doesn't depend on your use case is the use of a USB port as a power source. Sure, it makes sense for consumer products where compatibility trumps all. But, its fragile contacts and lack of shear strength mean that this isn't just a soldering station that's easy to fix, it's a station that you're going to need to fix.

The way I see it, FixHub is a gadget, and an 888 is an appliance. FixHub has several design decisions that compromise its sole purpose: soldering stuff. Direct heating elements are great, don't get me wrong. But if you're soldering frequently enough that a direct heating element would meaningfully boost your productivity, then a high-end RF induction iron would serve you much better. I wouldn't accept such a compromised tip mount and cable at any price point, let alone ~$350.

The 100w and heat resistant storage caps are nice, but that battery pack pricing and the lack of on-device controls makes this not an option for me.

$110 cad for the soldering iron is semi-reasonable, if a bit high compared to their competitors. $342 for the iron + battery means that's a $230 battery pack, which is absolutely insane.

Requiring the battery pack to be able to easily change controls means anyone doing more than super basic work, needs the $342 combo.

For tools that you use regularly, it is sometimes worth it to take a step back, put the cost into an absolute perspective and then just get the thing if you know that it's well-made and you use it regularly, instead of getting a cheapish, price-optimized knockoff instead (my experience).

I spent over 200$ on a glorified PCB holder and some probes (PCBite), which is in hindsight one of the most useful tools I own and still makes me happy every time I use it (even that alone is kinda worth it over time!).

I don't know your financial situation, but just consider: How much do you spend each month on meals/entertainment? Is $300 actually an inappropriate cost for a quality thing that you often need?

Note: Iron + station shows up as $250 to me, $350 is the set with some additional bits and bobs.

While I agree with all of your points on determining value, it's never that simple, and is often determined, in someone's mind, by the comparison made.

The comparison here is a Pinecil. I've been using a Pinecil for a couple of years now, I power it from a USB-PD power bank that's already in my backpack, and charges everything else I carry, and has more capacity and a lower price than this one, and the Pinecil without the power bank is much cheaper and more functional with its buttons and display than this iron alone; I don't need a PC (and I don't use Chrome anyway, though I do really like the WebSerial configuration).

I already own a Hakko soldering station, but I find I reach for the Pinecil 99% of the time due to convenience; only when I know I'll be doing a _lot_ of soldering in one go, and I'm going to do it at my desk, do I get the Hakko out.

This looks like a nice iron, and I'm all for supporting repairability (and iFixit in general), if someone will use it as their main station, and assuming this can perform, it seems like an excellent option.

For everyone else, a Pinecil and that powerbank you already have is an excellent option at a trivially low price.

EDIT: Fixed some typos

But it's just a soldering iron and a weird usb c power bank. Of course one can spend 300$ on it and justify it, but is this actually better than the alternatives?

The ts100 and variants of it have been around for a long time, can be adjusted on device and powered by regular usb pd power banks.

Why buy this for $250 when you get the same thing from a pinecil v2 and use it with any 20v 100w PD USB-c power pack? I'm not seeing any differentiating features.

Honestly a pinecil is more than enought to deal with small electronics

I can see why somebody might think that of general pine64 offerings, but the Pinecil is anything but that. It's a significant improvement over my bucket of old soldering irons I inherited and purchased over the years. Unless you are doing some serious heavy duty work, I'm hard pressed to think of a better alternative.

I love iFixit, but their tools, parts, and kits have been a bit mixed (bit of poor, bit of good) in terms of quality.

I think their tools are overhyped - not worth the price, you pay for the brand they have built by basically PR (repair scores for iPhones).

For me it's hard to reconcile what is a good initiative to ostensibly reduce waste, with the reality of ordering at least one of their products. For example I couldn't get a screen replacement at one point unless I ordered a kit, but I needed 2 screens, so I ordered 2 kits and now have redundant, specific, toxic, tools, only some of which actually helped perform the repair.

I'm thinking of the heating liquid pad, which gave me a bit of a laugh and didn't work, the plastic spudgers that were too soft to be durable, the precut adhesive strips that almost seemed insultingly ineffective. The actual handles and screwdriver bits were great though, so mixed feelings, I just hate waste.

Is this for professionals?. I need the soldering iron maybe 3 times a year. I'm ok throwing 100eur for something ok/good. But not 300.

It's hard to place exactly at its price point. At the full kit price it's approaching the cost of a mid-range Hakko soldering station which you can use all day every day.

I see this is a potential "better quality" portable option for a professional (than something like a Pinecil and a TS100), that might want to carry it around or use it when not at a desk, but the quality and performance remains to be seen (though I do trust iFixit).

At £240 in the UK, it's about 2.5x the cost of the Pinecil + Powerbank (which I already had). If I didn't have a Hakko soldering station and wanted something portable but capable to use fairly regularly, this seems like a good option.

For everyone else, if you already own a PD powerbank, the ~£25-30 (~£50 with a bunch of tips) for a Pinecil is _much_ more palatable.

I think you could justify the soldering iron itself then for like 80€, maybe not the basestation/powerbank.

IMO 340€ for the whole set with the wirecutters and tweezers and such is still an ok deal, even though it is slightly expensive, because the accessories are probably good quality also, and there are few things as frustrating as bad wirecutters ;).

I agree, in general, and also agree with iFixit charging whatever they can for it, but $350 is pretty much what I spend on core food for the month, or 3 pairs of shoes, or 2 pairs of climbing shoes, or a plane ticket to visit my hometown periodically. It is to your point also less than the tax on a new computer, and less than each ram upgrade on a MacBook Pro, or a week-long road trip, or a mountain lift ticket. There are different ways to convince yourself it's worth it, and it may be, but it's kind of a huge jump up if you're not already soldering nearly every day. Like $350 on meals and entertainment or $350 on a soldering iron is quite clear, I need to not buy the iron and reduce my spending a bit.

The TS80P is very nicely made and can be obtained for around $70. It's only 30W, but this newer generation of irons has a much more efficient tip design, so it works much better than the wattage would suggest (if you're comparing to a Hakko or something).

We designed the system to work for people at a variety of price points.

If you just buy the iron, you have access to all the settings in our web console: https://www.ifixit.com/fixhub/console

The iron persists settings when you unplug it. You can change the sleep timer and timeout, set target temperatures, calibrate the accelerometer, and more.

The Power Station is nice to have, but you don't lose any functionality without it.

I was a kickstarter backer of the pokit who thought "oh that's cool", and it just sits in my drawer because I don't want to have to use an app to use basic functionality on my tools. I learned my lesson on that one and I know if I bought this soldering iron I would have the same issue. I'd rather use other soldering irons because I don't have to plug them into my computer to change the temperature between tasks.

FWIW this is just my $0.02. I'm sure you'll still sell lots, but if that had an onboard display + buttons then I'd have ordered one right away for the other nice tweaks you've done.

I feel the same way, but did just realize that because they used web serial, you could use the iron to make yourself a little 3D interface, could be a fun project.

Yep, i'm much of the same opinion. It's a much sillier product, but I had a annova sous vide forever ago that died.

Looked around, heard Joule was the "go to" these days, got one. Gave it the fuck away eventually after the 15th time the app lagged or wouldn't work or whatever.

I'm sick and tired of my tools (yes it's a cooking tool) having the audacity to require an app. I get there's a lot of possible functionality that an app provides, but the annova I replaced it with still has a functional interface so I don't have to fuck with it for the basics.

I don't even see what the workflow would be to use their web interface on this iron?

I'm running a TS80 with IronOS as my daily driver for device/cable connection on the field (relatively thin cables) and some misc PCB repairs. And I set the temperature (and other settings, like sleep) once and that's it. I know I'm probably a niche user, but I see this working very nicely (it looks better quality, I like the connector design they used more, ect) for me, if/when the TS80 kicks the dust.

YMMV, but I think you can get a lot of mileage with a setup like that. Thinking about it, even my 'stationary' old Weller is used as an ON/OFF affair 98% of the time.

> If you just buy the iron, you have access to all the settings in our web console: https://www.ifixit.com/fixhub/console

So how are you supposed to actually use that? I don't think there are any computers out there which can provide 100W out of their USB ports.

Am I supposed to unplug the iron from its power supply, plug it into a computer, change the temperature, unplug it, plug the power supply back in, wait for it to heat up, and finally continue soldering? That's awkward enough that even a crappy proprietary smartphone app would've been better!

Here's an idea: get a USB-C hub that can use auxiliary power/passthrough charging/whatever it's called:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XF5489G

Make sure it can support 100W (that one only goes to 85W).

Plug one end into your PC, one into a wall charger, and one into your soldering iron.

If you want to solder such a thing yourself, there's USB-C PD data/power splitters sold in various places (it needs to be smarter than just connecting pins, since it needs to intercept the power negotiation), but I haven't yet found a part that is advertised to handle 100W.

That hub doesn't work that way.

The hub has a bunch of female ports, and one male USB C port.

The male USB port is the only one that provides USB PD charging output, and it is also the only port that can be used with a USB host machine.

This means that it cannot be used to change settings on the iFixit iron with a computer and give give the iron enough power to heat up. It's not an improvement at all over a regular computer that also cannot do both of these things concurrently.

It looks like a lovely hub to keep on a desk for plugging in a laptop, but it is broadly limited to doing exactly that.

Could you make a cheaper Power Station with an AC/DC converter and no battery? I will forget what temperature I set this at if I don't have visual feedback.

Seriously? You need to use a web portal to change temperature?

No Firefox support? Seriously?

This is a Firefox problem, not an iFixit problem.

Mozilla didn’t make them implement a browser feature that is not widely available. Believe it or not there are plenty of better soldering irons that don’t require a web browser to configure.

You don't have to have Chrome to configure it (the story talks about this). It's configured over a serial interface and among browsers only Chrome on desktop implements WebSerial (and probably other browsers based on Chrome). That said, they did go out of their way and make the Chrome experience nice.

WebSerial in this instance, and it's also not on Safari on Mac.

It's a convenience but I'm happy using CoolTerm on my Mac or launching Chrome if I need some WebSerial feature like in-browser flashing of my Meshtastic nodes.

At $342 I'd rather buy the production line JBC from Weidinger and spend the difference on tips or another handle.

Well done! I'm mostly a TS100 user, so I'm looking at it from that angle.

Why no boost button (unless I missed it)? That's the one on-iron UI feature I'd be missing - very useful for GND planes. I'm guessing its not a matter of rated power, but just the thermal resistance from the physical size of the tip which restricts heat entering into a heavily-heatsinked joint. Helpful to increase the iron temperature momentarily for such cases. Then again, I can't see heat transfer - happy to be told I'm wrong.

Is this your own tip design or is it the same as the TS80? Can't speak to the TS80 but I've found the TS100 tip quality to be somewhat lacking (I've had tips plainly break off before).

It's our own design, although clearly inspired by those who came before.

I'm really happy with their quality, but you'll have to judge that for yourself.

We're handling the boosting automatically in software. When the iron detects that it's under load, it maxxes out the power to the tip. It's incredibly responsive.

You're right, where you want that is with high thermal mass objects like ground planes. The difficult part is getting enough of a thermal bridge onto the material to really let the iron rip. It can dump a lot of power into a joint.

Thanks for the response! If true, this would make the experience more like a Metcal then. Very good iron. You must have your thermistor/thermocouple very close / inside the tip itself then, no?

No doubts then on the tip quality - I've seen the rest of your stuff (good).

Yes, the thermistor is inside the tip. That's essential to getting good performance out of the algorithm.

The instant that the iron detects that it's under load, it pours power into the heating element. That makes it feel and perform like a much more powerful iron. We're dynamically responding to the power load and flowing heat into the material.

...just as IronOS does on a Pinecil.

The sensor for the Pinecil / TS100 seems to be located fully behind the tip though: https://web.archive.org/web/20221110163337/http://www.minids...

Indeed.

I guess we'll have to wait for an iFixit teardown to see how this new widget actually differs in internal construction.

Yeah, boost button was a huge step up when I got my TS100 and now I can't imagine ever buying a new iron without it.

Plus, not having the ability to quickly tune temperature settings on the iron itself seems like a step back as well.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong on these, as iFixit's screwdriver sets were one of those things I needed to use to understand the hype (and then promptly bought my own set), so maybe this is another case of subtle quality you have to see for yourself?

We spent a lot of time tuning it. We've found that temperature settings really aren't needed for most use cases as long as the heating algorithm is responsive enough.

But that may not be for everyone: With the Power Station, changing the temperature is fast and easy with the dial, so you can pick a workflow that works best for you. (You can also change the temperature with the web interface.)

Appreciate the response! I'm still not immediately sold (my TS100 is doing great and I can't justify replacing a perfectly acceptable iron), but I'll have to give it a try sometime because it does look really thoughtfully designed!

Unfortunate that they didn't make it compatible with genuine Hakko or JBC tips like many of the no-name knock-off soldering stations are, but I suppose being based in the US they might be wary of violating the design patents of those companies.

Anyway it's good to have an option that's cheaper than the big names but presumably built to a higher standard than an AliExpress special, and has an actual warranty and safety certifications.

We'll have a range of tips. Hitting the high performance we wanted, with 100 Watt output in a small iron, required really optimizing the entire system. The heating element and temperature sensor are in the tip itself.

We really see JBC as our competition here. Performance and responsiveness should be comparable or better, at a fraction of the price.

Where can I buy these cartridges? For JBC we have official catalogue, local retailers, aliexpress, and secondary market full of any tip I might need.

What kind of tips do you plan producing for the fixhub?

P.S.: all JBC stands (genuine and most of knock-offs) have really comfortable holder with detents to change cartridges on-handed on the fly. Do you plan any such features? I do not see any steps or hooks on a tip.

Good questions!

Tips we'll have at launch: Cone, Bevel 1.5, Wedge 1.5, Point, Bevel 2.6, Knife 2.5, Knife 1.4.

They'll be on sale in our store on October 15. https://www.ifixit.com/Tools/Soldering_and_Wiring

We will also be selling a complete line of replacement parts.

I'm working right now on our distribution partners, but we'll have a variety of local and online distributors who you can also buy the system through.

Rather than designing it to change tips on the fly, we set up the Power Station to handle two irons, with two USB ports and a mounting socket on both sides.

Nice! Thanks, these seems to be the most popular types. Do your bevel tips have a dimple in the middle? It is very useful to contain a drop of solder even when dragging the tip over flat surfaces.

> we set up the Power Station to handle two irons

Having two handles is useful sometimes, but quick changing tips are a game-changer even for double jbc stations )

Clever, Dual wielding. Watch out failed PCBs, the scary man with two swords is coming for you. Blunt and slash damage.

The heating element and temperature sensor are also in the tips themselves in both Pinecil and the Miniware TS80/TS100 designs. Every modern 'commercial' soldering iron (Hakko T12 line, JBC, many others) has moved this way too.

I would be surprised if TS100 style tips couldn't do that power output. Folks have gotten the Pinceil to 140W with the right power supply.

These 140w are peak power, only in specific cases. To have useful power at all times you need to perfectly match supply voltage to i-v curve of your tip. Which pinecil (due to its schematic) cannot do.

That makes sense, thanks for the response!

Even compatibility with TS100/Pinecil V2 tips would be better. TS100 is meant to be open source, and the Pinecil V2 tips are just shorter with a different resistance.

Same, the first thing I looked for is what tip it uses.

I want to like the miniware, pine, etc irons, but I'd really like being able to buy T15 tips from my local electronics supplier, who carries Hakko.

If the product isn't sucessful and/or ifixit stops producing tips for whatever reason, a perfectly good iron is effectively bricked.

Overall a great idea, though not a fan that you can’t directly change the temperature on the soldering iron without the power station.

You can set the temperature on the iron with our web console, which uses Web Serial: https://www.ifixit.com/fixhub/console

Once you set the temperature, the iron remembers it and you can use any power source.

We've spent a lot of time talking to engineers and makers who solder all day, and it turns out that most people rarely change the temperature. Pick a temperature you like and leave it there.

Our heating algorithm detects and dynamically responds to load, so you don't need to turn the temperature up for larger thermal masses: it'll add as many joules as required to get it to temperature.

I definitely can see that, I rarely change my solder iron temp too but the biggest issue is that I purposely do not keep my phone or laptop within reach where I solder. I still use lead solder and I don’t want to accidentally rub off any. Seems like a huge pain to wash my hand, get my laptop, change temp, then continue. But like you mentioned, I probably haven’t changed the temp on my iron in a while, ironically the last time I changed it was because I used silver solder.

Do you have plans to have an actual local application to do this? Chrome-only web tools are not sustainable and a deal breaker.

As noted in the article, there's also a traditional serial interface.

In that case, an Arduino + touch screen would be a nice little addon for this.

This is something I'm wondering about, because yeah - my ability to change the iron temperature (if not using the battery) shouldn't depend on iFixit's servers being online. I would at least hope that they document the protocol so that other people can write local applications to do it if not.

Protocol here:

https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/fixhub_seria...

> Pick a temperature you like and leave it there.

It's hard to argue because that's mostly what I do. But it feel really odd for a soldering iron not to have a temperature control right on it. Especially given competitor irons have screens and buttons. Going to a web interface seems insane in comparison to pressing some buttons.

That's a no-go for me then.

If you feel like $80 is too much, I recently bought $6 temperature regulated soldering iron (model 908S) on AliExpress and it has no problem soldering even LQFP-48 or MSOP-10 packages.

This looks cool, and I'd buy one if I needed one... but I already have a full-sized soldering station and a Pinecil.

The station has a hot air gun and a solder vacuum, so it's far more suitable for use on the bench due to those capabilities.

The Pinecil plugs into the Anker power bank that I carry with me everywhere anyhow, and runs basically forever on it. The UI took a day or so to get used to, but it's simple and straightforward enough for field use. I've even used it for bigger jobs on trucks and tractors in the past, and it didn't miss a beat.

100W via TRS 3.5mm connector? I checked and I didn't even find a power rating for these connectors, but that seems excessive.

Weller uses TRS too. In my experience the connection is a little flaky, but I don’t know the provenance of the lab irons I’ve used; it wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve been abused.

https://www.weller-tools.com/us/en/industrial-soldering/prod...

Where are you seeing a TRS connector? Looks like it's USB-C everywhere to me...

We use a TRS connector between the tip and the iron. And yes, it's a lot of amps!

It's amazing how versatile a well designed analog connector can be.

Ah! I was looking around for one: not on the battery pack, not on the iron-to-cable connection, but didn't think about the tips.

So you can plug an unused tip into your Walkman's headphone jack for safekeeping...

The twist is that the TRS is the heating element.

Interesting that new products are shipping 'relying' Web Serial, given it's tenuous position as a web standard.