On Mon, 26 Mar 2018 00:25:52 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
wrote:
Apart from anything else, with a low volt temperature controlled iron,
both the bits and elements will last longer. An important thing when
earning money from repairs. Anyone who doesn't know this is an
amateur.

That's just funny. It's probably fair to say that ignorance re soldering
iron tips is common.

Are you saying from experience that a non temperature controlled mains
iron will have as long and element and bit life as a low voltage
temperature controlled type?

An oversimplification, in general a controlled iron will have a longer
bit life, but many irons including my two are not controlled and are
still on their first bit.

I'm saying from *my* experience, they don't.

In a repair shop, an iron is often left on all day whether in use or not.

Depends on duty cycle, depends on the items being repaired.

On a personal level, I would always prefer a copper tip, I always
liked the resin cored flux and the Savbit alloy [Fry's I think].

Watching all manner of people of all abilities antics with an Iron, I
think there is a lot of empathy needed with the equipment to produce a
good joint. Basically whatever one feels comfortable with, but
dropping a few Meg of RAM, a CPU and a few interface chips onto a
board with a 25W iron, wouldn't endear One to the workshop manager.

Incidentally, the controlled stations tended to be wacked up fully
anyway, the irons were seldom out of ones grubby little mitts, so
there was often only a few minutes to build up temperature during the
"repairs"


Very rarely did the luxury of faultfinding pay off, the cost of labour
vs components led to blanket component swaps.


Some professionals would probably produce a more mechanically sound,
electrically conductive joint with a tube of Bostick. Whatever the
equipment used to melt the solder.

A bit like yours truly with plastering.