Quick Guide to Choose The Right Soldering Iron

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For the makers, especially the newbies, it usually gets tough to select that one right iron for your soldering work. Here’s a quick guide to help you make the right choice. Happy making!

With a huge range of soldering irons available in the market today, choosing the appropriate one for yourself might be confusing at times. The rule of thumb here is to pick an iron that gels well into the type of work you intend to put it into.

Getting in details, there are 3 major factors to consider while picking up your high-quality soldering iron kit:

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1. the type of iron,
2. the temperature system
3. the watt of power.

Let’s read whats what in details:

1. Type of Iron

Majorly there are 4 types of irons you can consider: Soldering pencil, Soldering Gun, Soldering station, Rework/repair station

Soldering Pencil

The most basic and simple type of soldering tool which can simply be used for small DIY projects. These pencils range from INR 130 to 700 depending upon the wattage and build quality. You can find good deals at Flipkart or eBay.

Although these soldering pencils are not recommended for fine soldering as they do have any temperature control system for the iron tip. Overexposure to heating element during soldering might damage the Electronics components and peel off tracks present on the circuit board.

Soldering Gun

A higher and a little more sophisticated form of soldering pencil is soldering gun. The main component that differentiate is from a soldering pencil is the transformer on the machine. This transformer is capable of converting 110 V AC to a lower voltage. As the secondary winding of this transformer has only one turn, the transformer is capable of producing extremely low voltage and several hundred amperes of current.

Also having a very small warm up time, these guns can be easily turned on and off in very short time. These guns range from INR 750 to INR 1500. You can get few good deals on eBay.

Although again these guns can generate too much heat to be used on fine circuit boards, hence they are not recommend to be used for circuit board and components.

Soldering stations

Growing in functionalities, sophistication and usage from soldering pencil and guns the third level of soldering tools are the Soldering stations. These stations consists of soldering pencil that are attached to a power station. This power station can control the temperature settings for the soldering pencil’s tip.

Higher versions of these soldering stations also come with electronic temperature control that allows you to set and maintain the temperature very precisely. These electronics temperature controller automatically keeps an appropriate temperature at the Soldering iron tip.

The price ranges from INR 300 to 7000 based upon the wattage and size of the soldering stations. You can find good deals on ebay and flipkart.

Due to their temperature control capability, these Soldering station are safe to be used with most of the soldering projects like soldering through-hole and fine surface-mount components.

Rework/repair systems

A rework/repair system is even more complex soldering platform which is most commonly used by professionals in industry or by the high-volume manufacturers. These soldering systems have a combination of several hand pieces which includes soldering iron, hot-air guns, de-soldering guns, thermo-tweezers, et al.

From small rework soldering stations to sophisticated ones, these stations are comes in a price range of INR 3000 to 200000. You can find some good deals at eBay.

2. Temperature

The major types of soldering irons based on temperature designs:

1) Irons with no temperature control: these are usually the least expensive type of irons. You simply need to plug them in and they are ready to use once they are warmed up. These irons are best suited for household soldering jobs.

2) Temperature controlled Irons: like some of the soldering guns, allows the user to ensure that the Hot iron’s tip maintains the right temperature throughout the usage. These irons are slightly more expensive than the basic soldering irons.

3) Soldering stations: Like mentioned above in types of soldering tools, we also have soldering stations in the market that comes with a separate temperature control unit.

3. Wattage

Other than choosing the type of Iron you want to use, you also need to pick up the type of wattage you desire. A typical soldering iron provides wattage between fifteen and twenty-five watts. Irons with higher wattage allows the irons store more power in reserve allowing them to remain heated for a longer duration of time which also makes them better suited for heavy-duty projects.

Note: previously the size and shape of the iron’s tip was another major factor while buying the right soldering tool, but with irons with changeable tips in the market, this problem seems solved.

Tips for Beginners while using a Soldering Station:

1. Clean the tip regularly of the soldering Iron.
2. The soldering iron must be light weight for minimum accidents.
3. Do not touch the soldering iron as the temperature of a regular soldering iron is in between 200°-480°C. Also, try not to touch soldering joints just after the process.
4. Always use a wire desoldering tool to remove any unwanted soldering
5. Buy a soldering iron stand, to avoid any misplacements.
6. Try to buy soldering iron which heats up quickly.
7. Try to buy a soldering iron with temperature adjustability with precise temperature control.
8. Also, try to find a soldering iron with lead-free tip

To watch how an electric Soldering iron works: click here

Hope this guide will help you buy the right iron. Enjoy making!

Author is a Senior Correspondent and Marketing Support lead at EFY.

To read about various Soldering Stations: click here