" bravely wrote to "All" (28 Aug 04 04:07:54)
--- on the heady topic of " how do you clean your tip?"

Why don't they make tips out of aluminum alloy? I shaped a small Al tip
to remove 8 pin ics and it seems to work fine without corroding at all.


al From:

al "Eric" On Fri, 27 Aug 2004
al 06:47:23 +1200, "Eric" wrote:

Most of us, because we were taught that way, use a wet sponge.

But the local university says, you should never use a wet sponge.



Has anybody got a better way and maybe the tips last longer?

a wet sponge serves several uses during the soldering process..
al 1-it helps to keep the tip of the hot iron clean by ..quickly..moving
al the tip across the sponge surface..this simple act causes the
al impurities to be rubbed off the tip..
al 2-it acts to temporarily reduce the tip temperature to prevent harmful
al vapors to continue burning from the tip tremperature
al 3-it promotes clean and shiny solder connections..which help to
al prevent contaminated solder joints..
al 4-the military and nasa..teach the use of a wet sponge in their
al soldering methods
al 5-so does the IPC organization
al and finally..it irritates the hell out of a university..when you don't
al see things their way..but then..what could you possibly expect from a
al "teaching?" organization

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