Making Soldering Tips

Korishan

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I have a Weller soldering iron with the 3 leds on it (tho, the leds don't properly light up the actually area that's being soldered). I've destroy the original tip quite some ago and decide to look up making my own tips.

I found several examples online on what to do. Take a piece heavy gauge copper wire and cut it to length, shape the end(s) to what you need. For the weller, I had to get a piece of copper tubing to take up the slack space since the gauge larger wouldn't actually fit inside the iron.

It works for the most part, but I find that the tips load up with junk quite often and becomes difficult to keep solder sticking to the tip. I have to take my wire snips to scrape off a layer to get back to clean copper. I do have a ball of copper brillo to help keep the tips clean.
I do that about once every hour or so of use. Obviously, not an hour straight of usage, since at least half that time the iron is just sitting there smoldering in the holder.

So, has anyone else made their own tips and how did you make them? Is there any way to prolong the tips life? Is there a tinning technique that I'm missing?


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Buy one. Its not worh making tips for smaller irons. Why? Because a copper rod will wear out in couple of hours and you need to file it down.

Proper tips are covered with some "iron" alloy (Not sure how to write it in english)
You need to clean the tip pretty often. Use sponge or other stuff to clean.

I have pure copper on my big iron but thats because i cannot buy any tips so i have to file it every other day to maintain a surface thats worth :)

And if you get new tip:
1. Always tin it directly before use
2. Keep the tip clean and tinned
3. retinn it before you shut it down.
 
daromer said:
And if you get new tip:
1. Always tin it directly before use
2. Keep the tip clean and tinned
3. retinn it before you shut it down.

Alrighty, so I thought I had tinned it to start with.

What is the proper process for tinning a tip? How does a sponge keep it clean? I thought using a copper brillo would help keep the tip clean.
 
Tinning from start is just about adding some tin to make sure its not drying out. Then the tip will work better. It always need to be tinned.

If the tinn dries out a wet sponge wont be able to keep it clean and you need copper brillo instead.
So both of above is a must to have if you want to extend the life

But it all boils down to using proper tips to begin with that have the iron alloy on top of it. Homemade will not last that long. Only usable on big ones where you have lets say 10mm tip :) For a 0.4mm tip a pure copper tip wears out in a hour or 2 :)
 
Yeah its important to keep the tips clean :)
 
Alrighty, thanks guys. I'll see what I can do to change. Plus, I think i'm gonna order some tips from Banggood. Only thing is, the tips I see are hollow. I like having solid tips. They retain the heat better. Oh well. The ones on BG will have multiple different designs to aid in my soldering attempts :p
 
If you can for weller, buy the genuine ones, the aftermarket ones use much thinner plating and fail in a month vs the genuine ones that can last many years if you look after them (still using the first tip that came with my weller, and only on my second tip for my hakko 888 after years of daily soldering)

Even buying new pencils tends to be pretty cheap out of weller (was $38 last time i bought one, through a supplier called "wes components")
 
yeah proper tips last ages if taken care of. When i started this when i was like 6-7-8 or whatever i thought some tips was to big and i took the file... My dad was not happy at me whatsoever :D

Because those tips was destroyed after that... :p
 
Funny this tread should appear just when I was thinking about making a solid silver tip ....

I'm fed up with copper it just oxidises and gets black and dirty .... silver is more conductive than copper ... doesn't oxidise , but would it work??? I guess it would have to be "tinnable " for it to work ...I don't know if it is ???
 
Silver i think would not last long at all, it does oxidize, silver oxide forms, silver oxide becomes a liquid at 280C, and then would diffuse into the solder your applying causing very hard joints.

I dug around and found this, https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/hakkotips.pdf

So it seems you could get away with any material you can apply a thick hard plating of chrome and tin onto. (note for chrome there is a big difference between decorative plating and hard plating)
 
Rerouter said:
Silver i think would not last long at all, it does oxidize, silver oxide forms, silver oxide becomes a liquid at 280C, and then would diffuse into the solder your applying causing very hard joints.

I dug around and found this, https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/hakkotips.pdf

So it seems you could get away with any material you can apply a thick hard plating of chrome and tin onto. (note for chrome there is a big difference between decorative plating and hard plating)

Interesting link .... It's true there is an oxide of silver , and it does melt at 280 ... but it can't be formed by heating the metal ... "Silver doesnot react with air, even at red heat, and thus was considered by ..." Wikipedia .... it does tarnish as a result of HS in the air.

What action the flux will have is not clear , but silver is a nobelmetal , I suspect it won't do much ...

Just searched and already a thread on the idea....https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/questions-on-using-solid-silver-for-a-soldering-iron-tip.131876/
 
Hi all,

I'm having little success soldering my 20 gauge tinned copper wire to the tops of my bus cable. I have wrapped 3 solid 12 gauge copper wires together for the bus bar. I use some Oatey plumbing flux from Home Depot, A Weller 140 watt variable iron with flat tip (see picture), and thin 60/40 rosin core solder. First thing I do is appy some of the flux to the top of the bus bar and then I place the solder gun tip on the top of the connection while pushing solder through the tip. I observed that the solder does not stick to the cable,and I've read here on the forums of one guy using a micro butane torch to heat his bus up. I've tried using a regular plumbers's torch, but it burns everything in sight, including the plastic cell keeper. Any tips (pun intended)?

Thanks,

Paul
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I have that same soldering iron. You're using the wrong tip. That tip you have on is a smoothing tip, not a soldering tip. Use these (link below). Double check they match your exact model and make sure you grab the copper ones, not the new cheapo silver-colored ones. Additionally, make sure the hex screws are tight. As the metal heats/cools, they loosen up. If they aren't as tight as you can get them, heat transfer doesn't work well. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N52L9AU/

Also, don't use that plumbing flux. If you do, they will look like the below pictures after a few weeks and you end up ruining 1680 cells like I did ;) Don't make the same mistake!
http://secondlifestorage.com/t-Mike-s-DIY-Powerwall?pid=431#pid431

This is the flux you want
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0080X79HG/
 
Also note that a soldering gun like that may have some power to it... It still have very little actual heat mass on that tip and will be cold down quick by that busbar and make it act like an small 50w soldering iron :)

Just a tip. I had one of those 2 but i never use it anymore due to its not good enough.
 
daromer said:
Also note that a soldering gun like that may have some power to it... It still have very little actual heat mass on that tip....

That's right ...there needs to be some mass in the tip ... when not in contact with anything the temperature of the tip rises and rises storing heat , at contact this is dumped quickly on the workpiece , the workpiece rises rapidly before it can be conducted away ...

I'm surprised how well my puny 60W iron can solder on to these cells ... it might have trouble with 3 x 12 AWG ... that's 10mm2..

Looking at that busbar has raised a question in my mind .... twisting wires like that does increase the cross section of the busbar, but will it reduce the resistance compared to 3 straight strands?

Put another way if you take 3 strands each three meters longand twist them you might have a cable 2 meters long ... but have you reduced the resistance per meter in the twisting ? ... it's cross section is now 15 mm2 not 10mm2 , but does the the resistance drop , because the current might follow the path of the twisted wires???
 
If you twist down 3 meter strands to 2 meters you have twisted it way to much and will have big issues if you ask me :D But i will definitely check this next time i twist to see how much it shrinks. I think its less than 1-2% in my case atleast. I dont want to twist them so they break.

I also solder in such a way that every other do solder all the strands together. This will make sure they are connected and i doesn't accidentally solder fuses on only 1 strand and not the others and at same time try to distribute the current on to all strands.

So in my application it most certainly lower resistance. But twisting for me is also about making the bus-bar more user-friendly. I tried just having the strands together but never liked that.
 
3 twisted strands will have a lower resistance than 3 straight strands, as the diameter will be larger,
 
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