Smitty Two wrote:

You may have used them with care. Production soldering personnel tend to
be hard on things. The simple act of replacing the iron in its holder
resembles a javelin throw, for example. Do that 500 or 1000 times a day,
drop the iron or the whole unit on the floor once a day, whack it on the
table deliberately to loosen a tip, etc, etc. Then see how often the
cords go intermittent, the fuses go out, the heaters burn up, the
switches malfunction, etc.

Edsyn will stand up to that kind of abuse all day long, every day, and
last for years with no attention at all. When they do fail, they send
you a brand new one for about half price. YMMV, of course.


No attention at all? We were required to check the temperature
calibration every 90 days. I did it several times, when the ME office
was overworked. There were a couple hundred irons, scattered between
manufacturing, test, service and engineering. I checked the tip to
ground resistance several times a day on the ions I used. I checked one
of the older digital bench meters out of our cal lab, and connected one
lead to the bench's ground system, and the other lead to a scrap of
unetched PC board so that I could pick up an iron and touch the PC board
while glancing at the meter. Anything above three ohms required the tip
to be removed and cleaned. If that didn't fix the problem, the iron had
to be turned in for repair. I spent about 10 minutes every day
maintaining my three Edsyn 'Loner' irons.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida