On 21 Apr 01:45, Joerg wrote:

Allus Smith wrote:
On 20 Apr 21:08, Allus Smith wrote:

On 21 Apr 01:08, William Sommerwerck wrote:
All this talk about soldering irons makes me think how
crummy too much American industrial design is.

Some US industrial design looks great but some looks
downright, well, Russian.

Sure you can see crap-looking design in western Europe too
but there's a lot less of it than in the US.

Take soldering irons for example. An ordinary soldering
iron in the US with unregulated temperature still has great
big mofo screws holding the tip.

By comparison, my 30 year old British-made basic Antex is a
sleek looking baby and those Antexes are not particularly
expensive.

Don't start me on the looks of cars!

I don't know which brands you're referring to, but I've
owned EDSYN (Engineering Dedicated To Suit Your Needs!)
irons for 20+ years, and they don't look anything like that.


EDSYN are lovely irons but none of them list for under $100
and I believe they all have temperature regulation.


Ahm, what? See below.


Apologies if I wasn't clear but EDSYN wasn't what I had in
mind when I said "An ordinary soldering iron in the US with
unregulated temperature". I mean the cheaper end of the
market but not as cheap the rock-bottom $5 irons!

http://www.edsyn.com/index.php?Mode=SolderingStations


Tell me, where's that ugly side-screw on this one?

http://www.edsyn.com/index.php?Mode=piw&pn=CL1481

Regarding your comment above, last time I checked $54.86 was
still less than $100 ...

Oh, and no temperature regulation :-)


Good point Joerg. I missed that one in the online catalogue.

You may be misunderstanding me if you think I said ALL basic
American soldering irons look Russian. I meant to say there was a
lot more of this sort of poor design in the US than in western
Europe. A single item doesn't really prove or disprove it.

However. as you kindly drew my attention to EDSYN then I show
illustrate the Antexes I mentioned.

http://www.antex.co.uk/prodtype.asp?CAT_ID=180
&strPageHistory=category

Consumer goods are cheaper in the US, so the usual $1 = £1 is
probably a good indicator of the sort of price level these irons
are at. It's the sub $20 market (including tax).